UC-NRLF 


B    3 


5D7 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  CRUZ 


THE 


WITS  AID  BEAUX  OF  SOCIETY. 


BY 


GRACE  AND  PHILIP  WHARTON, 

AUTHORS  OF    "TOE   QUEENS  OF   SOCIETY." 


Kllustratfons  from  Jiratouigs  65 
H.  K.   BROWNE  AND   JAMES   GODWIN. 

ENGRAVED  BY  THE  BROTHERS  DALZIEL. 


NEW    YORK: 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN    SQUARE. 

1861. 


PREFACE. 


THE  success  of  the  "  Queens  of  Society"  will  have  pio- 
neered the  way  for  the  "Wits  and  Beaux,"  with  whom, 
during  the  holiday  time  of  their  lives,  these  fair  ladies  were 
so  greatly  associated.  The  "  Queens,"  whether  all  wits  or 
not,  must  have  been  the  cause  of  wit  in  others;  their  influ- 
ence over  dandyism  is  notorious:  .their  power  to  make  or 
mar  a  man  of  fashion,  almost  historical.  So  far,  a  chronicle 
of  the  sayings  and  doings  of  the  "  Wits"  is  worthy  to  serve 
as  a, pendent  to  that  of  the  "Queens:"  happy  would  it  be 
for  society  if  the  annals  of  the  former  could  more  closely 
resemble  the  biography  of  the  latter.  But  it  may  not  be 
so:  men  are  subject  to  temptations,  to  failures;  to  delin- 
quencies, to  calamities,  of  which  women  can  scarcely  dream, 
and  which  they  can  only  lament  and  pity. 

Our  "Wits,"  too — to  separate  them  from  the  "Beaux" 
—were  men  who  often  took  an  active  part  in  the  stirring 
events  of  their  day ;  they  assumed  to  be  statesmen,  though, 
too  frequently,  they  were  only  politicians.  They  were 
brave  and  loyal :  indeed,  in  the  time  of  the  Stuarts,  all  the 
Wits  were  Cavaliers,  as  well  as  the  Beaux.  One  hears  of 
no  repartee  among  Cromwell's  followers ;  no  dash,  no  mer- 
riment in  Fairfax's  staff;  eloquence,  indeed,  but  no  wit  in 
the  Parliamentarians ;  and,  in  truth,  in  the  second  Charles's 
time,  the  king  might  have  headed  the  list  of  the  Wits  him- 
self— such  a  capital  man  as  his  Majesty  is  known  to  have 
been  for  a  wet  evening  or  a  dull  Sunday ;  such  a  famous 
teller  of  a  story — such  a  perfect  diner-out :  no  wonder  that 


IV  PREFACE. 

in  his  reign  we  had  George  Villiers,  second  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham of  that  family,  "mankind's  epitome,"  who  had  ev- 
ery pretension  to  every  accomplishment  combined  in  him- 
self. No  wonder  that  we  could  attract  De  Grammont  and 
Saint  Evremond  to  our  court;  and  own,  somewhat  to  our 
discredit  be  it  allowed,  Kochester  and  Beau  Fielding.  Ev- 
ery reign  has  had  its  wits,  but  those  in  Charles's  time  were 
so  numerous  as  to  distinguish  the  era  by  an  especial  bril- 
liancy. Nor  let  it  be  supposed  that  these  annals  do  not 
contain  a  moral  application.  They  show  how  little  the 
sparkling  attributes  herein  portrayed  conferred  happiness ; 
how  far  more  the  rare,  though  certainly  real  touches  of 
genuine  feeling  and  strong  affection,  which  appear  here  and 
there  eveu  in  the  lives  of  the  most  thoughtless  "  Wits  and 
Beaux,"  elevate  the  character  in  youth,  or  console  the  spir- 
it in  age.  They  prove  how  wise  has  been  that  change  in 
society  which  now  repudiates  the  "  Wit"  as  a  distinct  class, 
and  requires  general  intelligence  as  a  compensation  for  lost 
repartees,  or  long  obsolete  practical  jokes. 

"  Men  are  not  all  evil :"  so  in  the  life  of  George  Villiers, 
we  find  him  kind-hearted  and  free  from  hypocrisy.  His 
old  servants — and  the  fact  speaks  in  extenuation  of  one  of 
our  wildest  Wits  and  Beaux — loved  him  faithfully.  De 
Grammont,  we  all  own,  has  little  to  redeem  him  except  his 
good-nature :  Eochester's  latest  days  were  almost  hallowed 
by  his  penitence.  Chesterfield  is  saved  by  his  kindness  to 
the  Irish  and  his  affection  for  his  son.  Horace  Walpole 
had  human  affections,  though  a  most  inhuman  pen :  and 
Wharton  was  famous  for  his  good-humor. 

The  periods  most  abounding  in  the  Wit  and  the  Beau 
have,  of  course,  been  those  most  exempt  from  wars  and  ru- 
mors of  wars.  The  Eestoration ;  the  early  period  of  the 
Augustan  age ;  the  commencement  of  the  Hanoverian  dy- 
nasty,— have  all  been  enlivened  by  Wits  and  Beaux,  who 
came  to  light  like  mushrooms  after  a  storm  of  rain,  as  soon 


PREFACE.  V 

as  the  political  horizon  was  clear.  We  have  Congreve, 
who  affected  to  be  the  Beau  as  well  as  the  Wit ;  Lord  Her- 
vey,  more  of  the  courtier  than  the  Beau — a  Wit  by  inher- 
itance— a  peer,  assisted  into  a  pre-eminent  position  by  royal 
preference,  and  consequent  prestige  ;  and  all  these  men  were 
the  offspring  of  the  particular  state  of  the  times  in  which 
they  figured :  at  earlier  periods,  they  would  have  been 
deemed  effeminate ;  in  later  ones,  absurd. 

Then  the  scene  shifts :  intellect  had  marched  forward 
gigantically:  the  world  is  grown  exacting,  disputatious, 
critical,  and  such  men  as  Horace  Walpole  and  Brinsley 
Sheridan  appear ;  the  characteristics  of  wit  which  adorned 
that  age  being  well  diluted  by  the  feebler  talents  of  Selwyn 
and  Hook. 

Of  these,  and  others,  " table  traits"  and  other  traits,  are 
here  given :  brief  chronicles  of  their  life's  stage,  over  which 
a  curtain  has  so  long  been  dropped,  are  supplied  carefully 
from  well-established  sources :  it  is  with  characters,  not 
with  literary  history,  that  we  deal ;  and  do  our  best  to 
make  the  portraitures  life-like,  and  to  bring  forward  old 
memories,  which,  without  the  stamp  of  antiquity,  might  be 
suffered  to  pass  into  obscurity. 

Your  Wit  and  your  Beau,  be  he  French  or  English,  is 
no  medieval  personage :  the  aristocracy  of  the  present  day 
rank  among  his  immediate  descendants:  he  is  a  creature 
of  a  modern  and  an  artificial  age ;  and  with  his  career  are 
mingled  many  features  of  civilized  life,  manners,  habits, 
and  traces  of  family  history  which  are  still,  it  is  believed, 
interesting  to  the  majority  of  English  readers,  as  they  have 
long  been  to 

GRACE  and  PHILIP  WHARTON. 


CONTENTS. 


GEORGE  VILLIERS,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  BUCKINGHAM. 

Signs  of  the  Restoration Samuel  Pepys  in  his  Glory A  royal  Company.  —  Pepys 

"ready  to  weep." — The  Playmate  of  Charles  II — George  Villiers'  Inheritance. — Two 
gallant  young  Noblemen. — The  brave  Francis  Villiers. — After  the  Battle  of  Worcester. 
— Disguising  the  King. — Villiers  in  Hiding. — He  appears  as  a  Mountebank. — Bucking- 
ham's Habits. — A  daring  Adventure. — Cromwell's  saintly  Daughter. — Villiers  and  the 
Rabbi. — The  Buckingham  Pictures  and  Estates. — York  House. — Villiers  returns  to  En- 
gland.—Poor  Mary  Fairfax.— Villiers  in  the  Tower.— Abraham  Cowley,  the  Poet.— The 
greatest  Ornament  of  Whitehall — Buckingham's  Wit  and  Beauty.— Flecknoe's  Opinion 
of  him.— His  Duel  with  the  Earl  of  Shrewsbury — Villiers  as  a  Poet.— As  a  Dramatist. 

— A  fearful  Censure  ! — Villiers1  Influence  in  Parliament. — A  Scene  in  the  Lords The 

Duke  of  Ormond  in  Danger. — Colonel  Blood's  Outrages. — Wallingford  House,  and  Ham 
House.— "•  Madame  Ellen."— The  Cabal.— Villiers  again  in  the  Tower.— A  Change.— 
The  Duke  of  York's  Theatre. — Buckingham  and  the  Princess  of  Orange. — His  last  Hours. 
—His  Religion.— Death  of  Villiers — The  Duchess  of  Buckingham Page  13 

COUNT  DE  GRAMMONT,  ST.  EVREMOND,  AND  LORD  ROCHESTER. 

De  Grammont's  Choice.— His  Influence  with  Turenne.— The  Church  or  the  Army?— An 
Adventure  at  Lyons. — A  brilliant  Idea. — De  Grammont's  Generosity. — A  Horse  "for 

the  Cards." — Knight-Cicisbeism. — De   Grammont's  first  Love His  witty  Attacks  on 

Mazarin Anne  Lucie  de  la  Mothe  Houdancourt. — Beset  with  Snares. — De  Grammont's 

Visits  to  England.— Charles  II. — The  Court  of  Charles  II. — Introduction  of  Country- 
dances. — Norman  Peculiarities. — St.  Evremond,  the  handsome  Norman. — The  most  beau- 
tiful Woman  in  Europe. — Hortense  Mancini's  Adventures. — Madame  Mazarin's  House 
at  Chelsea.— Anecdote  of  Lord  Dorset.  —Lord  Rochester  in  his  Zenith.— His  Courage  and 

Wit. — Rochester's  Pranks  in   the  City. — Credulity,  past  and  present "Dr.  Bendo," 

and  La  Belle  Jennings La  Triste  Heritiere. — Elizabeth,  Countess  of  Rochester Retri- 
bution and  Reformation. — Rochester's  Exhortation  to  Mr.  Fanshawe. — Little  Jermyn 

An  incomparable  Beauty. — Anthony  Hamilton,  De  Grammont's  Biographer. — The  Three 
Courts — La  Belle  Hamilton. — De  Grammont's  Description  of  her. — Her  practical  Jokes. 

—The  household  Deity  of  Whitehall. —A  Chaplain  in  Livery.— Le  Mariage  force De 

Grammont's  last  Hours. — What  might  he  not  have  been  ? 49 

BEAU  FIELDING. 

On  Wits  and  Beaux. — Scotland  Yard  in  Charles  II. 'a  Day. — Orlando  of  "The  Tatler." — 
Beau  Fielding,  Justice  of  the  Peace.— Adonis  in  Search  of  a  Wife.— The  sham  Widow.— 
Ways  and  Means — Barbara  Villiers,  Lady  Castlemaine. — Quarrels  with  the  King. — The 
Beau's  second  Marriage. — The  last  Days  of  Fops  and  Beaux 86 

OF  CERTAIN  CLUBS  AND  CLUB-WITS  UNDER  ANNE. 

The  Origin  of  Clubs.— The  Establishment  of  Coffee-houses.— The  October  Club.— The  Beef- 
steak Club.— Of  certain  other  Clubs — The  Kit-kat  Club.— The  Romance  of  the  Bowl.— 
The  Toasts  of  the  Kit-kat.— The  Members  of  the  Kit-kat.— A  good  Wit,  and  a  bad  Ar- 
chitect — i4  Well-natured  Garth.1'— The  Poets  of  the  Kit-kat Charles  Montagu,  Earl 

of  Halifax.  —  Chancellor  Somers. —Charles  Sackville,  Lord  Dorset. —Less  celebrated 
Wits 95 

WILLIAM  CONGREVE. 

When  and  where  was  he  born?— The  Middle  Temple.— Congreve  finds  his  Vocation.— 
Verses  to  Queen  Mary. — The  Tennis-court  Theatre. — Congreve  abandons  the  Drama. — 
Jeremy  Collier. — The  Immorality  of  the  Stage. — Very  improper  Things. — Congreve1  a 
Writings.— Jeremy's  Short  Views.— Rival  Theatres.— Dryden's  Funeral.— A  Tub-Preach- 
er.—Horoscopic  Predictions. — Dryden's  Solicitude  for  his  Son. — Congreve's  Ambition 

Anecdote  of  Voltaire  and  Congreve — The  Profession  of  Maecenas — Congreve's  private 
Life.—"  MalbrookV1  Daughter.— Congreve's  Death  and  Burial 109 


viii  CONTENTS. 

BEAU  NASH. 


Pump-room,  etc. — A  public  Benefactor. — Life  at  Bath  in  Nash's  Time. — A  Compact  with 
the  Duke  of  Beaufort. — Gaming  at  Bath. — Anecdotes  of  Nash. — u  Misa  Sylvia." — A  gen- 
erous Act.  —  Nash's  Sun  setting.  — A  Panegyric.  — Nash1  a  Funeral.  — His  Characteris- 
tics   Page  127 

PHILIP,  DUKE  OF  WHARTON. 

Wharton' s  Ancestors — His  early  Years Marriage  at  sixteen — Wharton  takes  leave  of 

his  Tutor. — The  young  Marquis  and  the, old  Pretender. — Frolics  at  Paris. — Zeal  for  the 

Orange  Cause. — A  Jacobite  Hero The 'Trial  of  Atterbury. — Wharton's  Defense  of  the 

Bishop. — Hypocritical  Signs  of  Penitence. — Sir  Robert  Walpole  duped. — Very  trying 
—The  Duke  of  Wharton's  "  Whens."— Military  Glory  at  Gibraltar.— u  Uncle  Horace." 
—Wharton  to  Uncle  Horace.  — The  Duke's  Impudence — High  Treason.  — Wharton's 
ready  Wit.— Last  Extremities.— Sad  Days  in  Paris.— His  last  Journey  to  Spain.— His 
Death  in  a  Bernardine  Convent 145 

LORD  HERVEY. 

George  II.  arriving  from  Hanover.— His  Meeting  with  the  Queen — Lady  Suffolk.— Queen 
Caroline. — Sir  Robert  Walpole. — Lord  Hervey. — A  Set  of  fine  Gentlemen. — An  eccentric 

Race. Carr,  Lord  Hervey. — A  fragile  Boy. — Description  of  George  II.' s  Family. — Anno 

Brett.— A  bitter  Cup.— The  Darling  of  the  Family. —Evenings  at  St.  James's.— Freder- 
ick, Prince  of  Wales. — Amelia  Sophia  Walmoden. — Poor  Queen  Caroline! — Nocturnal 
Diversions  of  Maids  of  Honor.— IS eighbor  George's  Orange-chest — Mary  Lepel,  Lady 
Hervey.— Rivalry.—  Hervey' s  Intimacy  with  Lady  Mary. —Relaxations  of  the  royal 
Household.— Bacon's  Opinion  of  Twickenham — A  Visit  to  Pope's  Villa.— The  little 
Nightingale. — The  Essence  of  small  Talk. — Hervey's  Affectation  and  Effeminacy. — Pope's 
Quarrel  with  Hervey  and  Lady  Mary.— Hervey's  Duel  with  Pulteney.— uThe  Death  of 
Lord  Hervey:  a  Drama." — Queen  Caroline's  last  Drawing-room. — Her  Illness  and  Ag- 
ony.   A  painful  Scene.  — The  Truth  discovered.  — The  Queen's  dying  Bequests.  —  The 

King's  Temper.  — Archbishop  Potter  is  sent  for.  — The  Duty  of  Reconciliation.  — The 
Death  of  Queen  Caroline. — A  Change  in  Hervey's  Life — Lord  Hervey's  Death. — Want 
of  Christianity. — Memoirs  of  his  own  Time 165 

PHILIP  DORMER  STANHOPE,  FOURTH  EARL  OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

The  King  of  Table  Wits. — Early  Years. — Hervey's  Description  of  his  Person. — Resolutions 
and  Pursuits. — Study  of  Oratory. — The  Duties  of  an  Embassador. — King  George  IL's 
Opinion  of  his  Chroniclers. — Life  in  the  Country. — Melusina,  Countess  of  Walsingham. 
— George  II.  and  his  Father's  Will. — Dissolving  Views. — Madame  du  Bouchet — The 
Broad-bottomed  Administration. — Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland  in  time  i>f  Peril. — Reform- 
ation of  the  Calendar. — Chesterfield  House. — Exclusiveness. — Recommending  "John- 
son's Dictionary."— "Old  Samuel"  to  Chesterfield.— Defensive  Pride  of  the  "respect- 
able Hottentot." — The  Glass  of  Fashion. — Lord  Scarborough1  s  Friendship  for  Chesterfield. 

—  The  Death  of  Chesterfield's  Son.  — His  Interest  in  his  Grandsons.  —  UI  must  go  and 
rehearse  my  Funeral." — Chesterfield's  Will — What  is  a  Friend? — Les  Manieres  nobles. 
—Letters  to  his  Son 203 

THE  ABBE  SCARRON. 

An  Eastern  Allegory. — Who  comes  here? — A  mad  Freak  and  its  Consequences. — Making 
an  Abbe  of  him.— The  May-fair  of  Paris.— Scarron's  Lament  to  Pellisson.— The  Office 
of  the  Queen's  Patient. — "  Give  me  a  simple  Benefice." — Scarron's  Description  of  him- 
self.— Improvidence  and  Servility. — The  Society  at  Scarron's. — The  witty  Conversation. 

—  Franfoise  D'Aubigne's  Debut.  —  The  sad  Story  of  La  Belle  Indienne.  —  Matrimonial 
Considerations. — "Scarron's  Wife  will  live  forever." — Petits  Soupers. — Scarron's  last 
Moments. — A  Lesson  for  gay  and  grave 227 

FRANCOIS,  DUC  DE  LA  ROCHEFOUCAULT  AND  THE  DUG  DE  SAINT-SIMON. 

Rank  and  Good-breeding.  —  The  Hotel  de  Rochefoucault.  —  Racine  and  his  Plays.  —  La 
Rochefoucault's  Wit  and  Sensibility.— Saint-Simon's  Youth.— Looking  out  for  a  Wife.— 
Saint-Simon's  Court  Life. — The  History  of  Louise  de  la  Valliere. — A  mean  Act  of  Loim 
Quatorze. — All  has  passed  away ! — Saint-Simon's  Memoirs  of  his  own  Time 245 

HORACE  WALPOLE. 

The  Commoners  of  England Horace's  Regret  for  the  Death  of  his  Mother.—"  Little  Hor- 
ace" in  Arlington  Street. — Introduced  to  George  I. — Characteristic  Anecdote  of  George  I. 
• — Walpole' s  Education. — Schoolboy  Days. — Boyish  Friendships. — Companionship  of 
Gray.  —  A  dreary  Doom.  —  Walpole* s  Description  of  youthful  Delights.  —  Anecdote  of 


CONTENTS.  ix 

Pope  and  Frederick  of  Wales. —The  Pomfrets.— Sir  Thomas  Robinson's  Ball.— Political 
Squibs. — That  "  Rogue  "VValpole." — Sir  Robert's  Retirement  from  Office. — The  splendid  5 
Mansion  of  Houghton. — Sir  Robert's  Love  of  Gardening. — What  we  owe  to  the  u  Grandes 
Tours.'1— George  Vertue.— Men  of  one  Idea— The  noble  Picture-gallery  at  Houghton. 

— Sir  Robert's  Death — The  Granville  Faction. — A  very  good  Quarrel. — Twickenham. 

Strawberry  Hill.— The  Recluse  of  Strawberry.— Portraits  of  the  Digby  Family.— Sacri- 
lege.—Mrs.  Darner's  Models. —  The  Long  Gallery  at  Strawberry.— The  Chapel.  —  "  A 

dirty  little  Thing." — The  Society  around  Strawberry  Hill. — Anne  Seymour  Conway. 

A  Man  who  never  doubted. — Lady  Sophia  Fermor's  Marriage. — Horace  in  Favor. Anec- 
dote of  Sir  William  Stanhope.  — A  paper  House.  —  Wai  pole's  Habits.  —Why  did  he  not 
Marry? — "  Dowagers  as  plenty  as  Flounders." — Catherine  Hyde,  Duchess  of  Queensber- 

ry. — Anecdote  of  Lady  Granville. — Kitty  Clive. — Death  of  Horatio  Walpole. George, 

third  Earl  of  Oriord. — A  Visit  to  Houghton. — Family  Misfortunes. — Poor  Chatterton. 

Walpole' s  Concern  with  Chatterton. — Walpole  in  Paris — Anecdote  of  Madame  Geoffrin. 

— "-Who's  that  Mr.  Walpole?" — The  Miss  Berrys. — Horace's  two  "Straw  Berries." 

Tapping  a  new  Reign — The  Sign  of  the  Gothic  Castle.— Growing  old  with  Dignity- 
Succession  to  an  Earldom. — Walpole' s  last  Hours. — Let  us  not  be  ungrateful. . .  Page  255 

GEORGE  SELWYN. 

A  Love  of  Horrors. — Anecdotes  of  Selwyn's  Mother. — Selwyn's  College  Days. Orator  Hen- 
ley.—Selwyn's  blasphemous  Freak.— The  Profession  of  a  Wit— The  Thirst  for  Hazard. 
— Reynolds' s  Conversations-piece. — Selwyn's  Eccentricities  and  Witticisms. — A  most  im- 
portant Communication.  —  An  amateur  Headsman.  —  The  Eloquence  of  Indifference. 

Catching  a  Housebreaker.— The  Family  of  the  Selwyns — The  Man  of  the  People.— Sel- 
wyn's parliamentary  Career. — True  Wit. — Some  of  Selwyn's  witty  Sayings. — The  Sov- 
ereignty of  the  People.— On  two  Kinds  of  Wit.— Selwyn's  Home  for  Children.— Mie-Mie, 

the  little  Italian Selwyn's  little  Companion  taken  from  him. — His  later  Days  and 

Death 307 

RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN. 

Sheridan  a  Dunce Boyish  Dreams  of  literary  Fame. — Sheridan  in  Love. — A  Nest  of  Night- 
ingales.—The  Maid  of  Bath — Captivated  by  Genius — Sheridan's  Elopement  with  ''Ce- 
cilia.11—His  Duel  with  Captain  Matthews.— Standards  of  Ridicule Painful  family  Es- 
trangements.— Enters  Drury  Lane. — Success  of  the  Famous  u  School  for  Scandal." 

Opinions  of  Sheridan  and  his  Influence. — The  Literary  Club. — Anecdote  of  Carriers 
Admittance,— Origin  of  "the  Rejected  Addresses.1'— New  Flights.— Political  Ambition. 
— The  gaming  Mania. — Almack's. — Brookes1. — Black-balled. — Two  Versions  of  the  Elec- 
tion Trick.— St.  Stephen's  won.— Vocal  Difficulties.— Leads  a  double  Life.— Pitt's  vul- 
gar Attack. — Sheridan's  happy  Retort — Grattan's  Quip. — Sheridan's  Sallies The  Trial 

of  Warren  Hastings. — Wonderful  Effect  of  Sheridan's  Eloquence. — The  supreme  Effort. 
— The  Star  culminates. — Native  Taste  for  Swindling. — A  shrewd  but  graceless  Oxon- 
ian.— Duns  outwitted. — The  Lawyer  jockeyed — Adventures  with  Bailiffs. — Sheridan's 

Powers  of  Persuasion. — House  of  Commons  Greek Curious  Mimicry. The  royal  boon 

Companion — Lights  and  Shadows  of  Depravity. — Street  Frolics  at  Night. — An  old  Tale. 
— The  Fray  in  St.  Giles'. — Sheridan's  gradual  Downfall. — Unopened  Letters. — An  odd 
Incident. — Reckless  Extravagance. — Sporting  Ambition — Like  Father  like  Son. — A  se- 
vere and  witty  Rebuke.— Convivial  Excesses  of  a  past  Day.— Worth  wins  at  last.— Bit- 
ter Pangs.— The  Scythe  of  Death.— The  fair,  loving,  neglected  Wife.— Debts  of  Honor— 
Drury  Lane  burned. — The  Owner's  Serenity.— Misfortunes  never  come  singly. — The 
Whitbread  Quarrel. — Ruined,  undone,  and  almost  forsaken. — The  dead  Man  arrested. — 
The  Stories  fixed  on  Sheridan. — Extempore  Wit  and  inveterate  Talkers 329 

BEAU  BRUMMELL. 

Two  popular  Sciences "Buck  Brummell"  at  Eton. — Investing  his  Capital Young  Cor- 
net BrummelL  —  The  Beau's  Studio.  —The  Toilet.  —  "Creasing  down."  —  Sneers  and 

Snuff-boxes.  — A  great  Gentleman.  —  Anecdotes  of  Brummell "  Don't  forget  Brum  : 

Goose  at  Four!" — Offers  of  Intimacy  resented. — Never  in  Love. — Brummell  out  Hunt- 
ing.—Anecdote  of  Sheridan  and  Brummell.— The  Beau's  poetical  Efforts — The  Value 
of  a  crooked  Sixpence.  —  The  Breach  with  the  Prince  of  Wales.  —  "Who's  your  fat 
Friend?"— The  Climax  is  reached.— The  Black-mail  of  Calais.— George  the  Greater  and 
George  the  Less.  —  An  extraordinary  Step.  —  Down  the  Hill  of  Life.  —A  miserable  Old 
Age— In  the  Hospice  du  bon  Sauveur— O  young  Men  of  this  Age,  be  warned ! 381 

THEODORE  EDWARD  HOOK. 

The  greatest  of  modern  Wits.— What  Coleridge  said  of  Hook— Hook's  Family.— Redeem- 
ing  Points.— Versatility.— Varieties  of  Hoaxing.— The  Black-wafered  Horse.— The  Ber- 
ners  Street  Hoax.— Success  of  the  Scheme— The  Strop  of  Hunger.— Kitchen  Examina- 
tions.— The  wrong  House. — Angling  for  an  Invitation. — The  Hackney-coach  Device. — 
The  Plots  of  Hook  and  Mathews. — Hook's  Talents  as  an  Improvisatore The  Gift  be- 
comes his  Bane.  —  Hook1  s  Novels.  —  College  Fun.  —  Baiting  a  Proctor.  —  The  punning 
Faculty— Official  Life  opens— Troublesome  Pleasantry.— Charge  of  Embezzlement— 

A2 


X  CONTENTS. 

Misfortune — Doubly  disgraced.— No  Effort  to  remove  the  Stain— Attacks  on  the  Queen. 
— An  incongruous  Mixture. — Specimen  of  the  Ramsbottom  Letters. — Hook's  Scurrility. 
—Fortune  and  Popularity.— The  End Page  405 

SYDNEY  SMITH. 

The  "wise  Wit."— Oddities  of  the  Father.— Verse-making  at  Winchester.— Curate  Life  on 
Salisbury  Plain.  —  Old  Edinburgh.  —  Its  social  and  architect  m'al  Features.  —  Making 
Love  metaphysically.— The  old  Scottish  Supper.— The  Men  of  Mark  passing  away.— The 
Band  of  young  Spirits. — Brougham's  early  Tenacity. — Fitting  up  Conversations — "Old 
School"  Ceremonies. — The  Speculative  Society — A  brilliant  Set. — Sydney's  Opinion  of 
his  Friends.— Holland  House.— Preacher  at  the  "Foundling."— Sydney's  "Grammar 
of  Life."— The  Picture  Mania.— A  Living  cornea  at  last — The  Wit's  Ministry.— The 

first  Visit  to  Foston  le  Clay Country  Quiet The  universal  Scratcher. — Country  Life 

and  Country  Prejudice. — The  genial  Magistrate. — Glimpse  of  Edinburgh  Society — Mrs. 
Grant  of  Laggan. — A  Pension  Difficulty. — Jeffrey  and  Cockburn.— Craigcrook — Sydney 
Smith's  Cheerfulness — His  rheumatic  Armor. — No  Bishopric. — Becomes  Canon  of  St. 
Paul's. — Anecdotes  of  Lord  Dudley. — A  sharp  Reproof. — Sydney's  Classification  of  So- 
ciety.—Last  Stroke  of  Humor 433 

GEORGE  BUBB  DODINGTON,  LORD  MELCOMBE. 

A  dinner-giving  lordly  Poet.— A  Misfortune  for  a  Man  of  Society.— Brandenburgh  House. 
— "The  Diversions  of  the  Morning." — Johnson's  Opinion  of  Foote.— Churchill  and  the 
"  Rosciad."— Personal  Ridicule  in  its  proper  Light.— Wild  Specimen  of  the  Poet.— Wai- 
pole  on  Dodington's  "Diary."  —  The  best  Commentary  on  a  Man's  Life. — Leicester 
House. — Grace  Boyle. — Elegant  Modes  of  passing  Time. — A  sad  Day — What  does  Dnd- 

ington  come  here  for?  —  The  Veteran  Wit,  Beau,  and  Politician Defend  us  from  our 

Executors  and  Editors 469 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 
BEAU  FIELDING  AND  THE  SHAM  WIDOW. (Frontispiece.) 

VILLIERS  IN  DISGUISE— THE  MEETING  WITH  HIS  SISTER 24: 

DE  GRAMMONT'S  MEETING  WITH  LA  BELLE  HAMILTON 77 

WHARTOX'S  ROGUISH  PRESENT 149 

A  SCENE  BEFORE  KENSINGTON  PALACE— GEORGE  n.  AND  QUEEN  CARO- 
LINE     167 

POPE  AT  HIS  VILLA— DISTINGUISHED  VISITORS. 186 

A  ROYAL  ROBBER 210 

SCARRON  AND  THE  WITS— FIRST  APPEARANCE  OF  LA  BELLE  INDIENNE  237 

STRAWBERRY  HILL  FROM  THE  THAMES 276 

SELWYN  ACKNOWLEDGES  "THE  SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  PEOPLE" 322 

THE  FAMOUS  ULITERARY  CLUB" 340 

A  TREASURE  FOR  A  LADY— SHERIDAN  AND  THE  LAWYER 357 

THE  BEST  THING  BEAU  BRUMMELL  EVER  SAID 396 

THEODORE  HOOK'S  ENGINEERING  FROLIC 417 

A  DROLL  SCENE  AT  SYDNEY  SMITH'S 448 

SYDNEY  SMITH'S  WITTY  ANSWER  TO  THE  OLD  PARISH  CLERK  . .  . .    453 


THE 


WITS  AND  BEAUX  OF  SOCIETY, 


GEORGE  VILLIERS,  SECOO  DUKE  OF  BUCKINGHAM, 

SAMUEL  PEPYS,  the  weather-glass  of  his  time,  hails  the  first 
glimpse  of  the  Restoration  of  Charles  II.  in  his  usual  quaint 
terms  and  vulgar  sycophancy. 

"  To  Westminster  Hall,"  says  he ;  "  where  I  heard  how  the 
Parliament  had  this  day  dissolved  themselves,  and  did  pass 
very  cheerfully  through  the  Hall,  and  the  Speaker  without  his 
mace.  The  whole  Hall  was  joyful  thereat,  as  well  as  them- 
selves ;  and  now  they  begin  to  talk  loud  of  the  king."  And 
the  evening  was  closed,  he  further  tells  us,  with  a  large  bon- 
fire in  the  Exchange,  and  people  called  out,  "  God  bless  King 
Charles !" 

This  was  in  March,  1660 ;  and  during  that  spring,  Pepys  was 
noting  down  how  he  did  not  think  it  possible  that  "  my  Lord 
Protector,"  Richard  Cromwell,  should  come  into  power  again ; 
how  there  were  great  hopes  of  the  king's  arrival;  how  Monk, 
the  Restorer,  was  feasted  at  Mercers'  Hall ;  (Pepys's  own 
especial) ;  how  it  was  resolved  that  a  treaty  be  offered  to  the 
king,  privately ;  how  he  resolved  to  go  to  sea  with  "my  lord ;" 
and  how,  while  they  lay  at  Gravesend,  the  great  affair  which 
brought  back  Charles  Stuart  was  virtually  accomplished.  Then, 
with  various  parentheses,  inimitable  in  their  way,  Pepys  carries 
on  his  narrative.  He  has  left  his  father's  "  cutting-room"  to 
take  care  of  itself;  and  finds  his  cabin  little,  though  his  bed  is 
convenient,  but  is  certain,  as  he  rides  at  anchor  with  "  my  lord" 
in  the  ship,  that  the  king  "  must  of  necessity  come  in,"  and  the 
vessel  sails  round  and  anchors  in  Lee  Roads.  "  To  the  castles 
about  Deal,  where  our  fleet"  (our  fleet,  the  saucy  son  of  a  tai- 
lor !)  "  lay  and  anchored ;  great  was  the  shoot  of  guns  from  the 
castles  and  ships,  and  our  answers."  Glorious  Samuel !  in  his 
element,  to  be  sure. 

Then  the  wind  grew  high :  he  began  to  be  "  dizzy  and 
squeamish  ;"  nevertheless  employed  "  Lord's  Day"  in  looking 


14  SIGNS    OF   THE   RESTORATION. 

through  the  lieutenant's  glass  at  two  good  merchantmen,  and 
the  women  in  them,  "being  pretty  handsome;"  then  in  the 
afternoon  he  first  saw  Calais,  and  was  pleased,  though  it  was 
at  a  great  distance.  All  eyes  were  looking  across  the  Chan- 
nel just  then — for  the  king  was  at  Flushing ;  and,  though  the 
"  Fanatiques"  still  held  their  heads  up  high,  and  the  Cavaliers 
also  talked  high  on  the  other  side,  the  cause  that  Pepys  was 
bound  to  still  gained  ground. 

Then  "  they  begin  to  speak  freely  of  King  Charles ;"  church- 
es in  the  city,  Samuel  declares,  were  setting  up  his  arms ;  mer- 
chant-ships— more  important  in  those  days — were  hanging  out 
his  colors.  He  hears,  too,  how  the  Mercers'  Company  were 
making  a  statue  of  his  gracious  Majesty,  to  set  up  in  the  Ex- 
change. Ah!  Pepys's  heart  is  merry;  he  has  forty  shillings 
(some  shabby  perquisite)  given  him  by  Captain  Cowes  of  the 
"  Paragon ;"  and  "  my  lord"  in  the  evening  "  falls  to  singing" 
a  song  upon  the  Rump  to  the  tune  of  the  "  Blacksmith."" 

The  hopes  of  the  Cavalier  party  are  hourly  increasing,  and 
those  of  Pepys  we  may  be  sure  also ;  for  Pirn,  the  tailor,  spends 
a  morning  in  his  cabin  "  putting  a  great  many  ribbons  to  a 
sail."  And  the  king  is  to  be  brought  over  suddenly,  "my 
lord"  tells  him :  and  indeed  it  looks  like  it,  for  the  sailors  are 
drinking  Charles's  health  in  the  streets  of  Deal,  on  their  knees; 
"  which,  methinks,"  says  Pepys,  "  is  a  little  too  much ;"  and 
"  methinks"  so,  worthy  Master  Pepys,  also. 

Then,  how  the  news  of  the  Parliamentary  vote  of  the  king's 
declaration  was  received !  Pepys  becomes  eloquent. 

"He  that  can  fancy  a  fleet  (like  ours)  in  her  pride,  with 
pendants  loose,  guns  roaring,  caps  flying,  and  the  loud  '  Vive 
le  Hoi  r  echoed  from  one  ship's  company  to  another ;  he,  and 
he  only,  can  apprehend  the  joy  this  inclosed  vote  was  received 
with,  or  the  blessing  he  thought  himself  possessed  of  that 
bore  it." 

Next,  orders  come  for  "  my  lord"  to  sail  forthwith  to  the 
king;  and  the  painters  and  tailors  set  to  work,  Pepys  super- 
intending, "  cutting  out  some  pieces  of  yellow  cloth  in  the  fash- 
ion of  a  crown  and  C.  R. ;  and  putting  it  upon  a  fine  sheet" — 
and  that  is  to  supersede  the  States'  arms,  and  is  finished  and 
set  up.  And  the  next  day,  on  May  14,  the  Hague  is  seen 
plainly  by  us,  "  ray  lord  going  up  in  his  night-gown  into  the 
cuddy." 

And  then  they  land  at  the  Hague ;  some  "  nasty  Dutch- 
men" come  on  board  to  oifer  their  boats,  and  get  money, 
which  Pepys  does  not  like ;  and  in  time  they  find  themselves 
in  the  Hague,  "  a  most  neat  place  in  all  respects ;"  salute  the 
Queen  of  Bohemia  and  the  Prince  of  Orange — afterward  Wil- 


A   KOYAL   COMPANY.  15 

Ham  III. — and  find  at  their  place  of  supper  nothing  but  a  "  sal- 
let"  and  two  or  three  bones  of  mutton  provided  for  ten  of  us, 
"  which  was  very  strange."  Nevertheless,  on  they  sail,  hav- 
ing returned  to  the  fleet,  to  Schevelling ;  and,  on  the  23d  of 
the  month,  go  to  meet  the  king ;  who,  "  on  getting  into  the 
boat,  did  kiss  my  lord  with  much  affection."  And  "  extraor- 
dinary press  of  good  company,"  and  great  mirth  all  day,  an- 
nounced the  Restoration.  Nevertheless  Charles's  clothes  had 
not  been,  till  this  time,  Master  Pepys  is  assured,  worth  forty 
shillings — and  he,  as  a  connoisseur,  was  scandalized  at  the  fact. 

And  now,  before  we  proceed,  let  us  ask  who  -worthy  Sam- 
uel Pepys  was,  that  he  should  pass  such  stringent  comments 
on  men  and  manners  ?  His  origin  was  lowly ;  his  family  an- 
cient; his  father  having  followed,  until  the  Restoration,  the 
calling  of  a  tailor.  Pepys,  vulgar  as  he  was,  had  nevertheless 
received  a  university  education ;  first  entering  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  as  a  sizar.  To  our  wonder  we  find  him  mar- 
rying furtively  and  independently ;  and  his  wife,  of  fifteen,  was 
glad  with  her  husband  to  take  up  an  abode  in  the  house  of  a 
relative,  Sir  Edward  Montagu,  afterward  Earl  of  Sandwich, 
the  "my  lord"  under  whose  shadow  Samuel  Pepys  dwelt  in 
reverence.  By  this  nobleman's  influence,  Pepys  forever  left 
the  "  cutting-room ;"  he  acted  first  as  Secretary  (always  as 
toad-eater,  one  would  fancy),  then  became  a  clerk  in  the  Ad- 
miralty ;  and  as  such  went,  after  the  Restoration,  to  live  in 
Seething  Lane,  in  the  parish  of  St.  Olave,  Hart  Street — and  in 
St.  Olave  his  mortal  part  was  ultimately  deposited. 

So  much  for  Pepys.  See  him  now,  in  his  full-bottomed  wig, 
and  best  cambric  neckerchief,  looking  out  for  the  king  and  his 
suit,  who  are  coming  on  board  the  "  Nazeby." 

"  Up,  and  made  myself  as  fine  as  I  could,  with  the  linning 
stockings  on,  and  wide  canons  that  I  bought  the  other  day  at 
the  Hague."  So  began  he  the  day.  "All  day  nothing  but 
lords  and  persons  of  honor  on  board,  that  we  were  exceeding 
full.  Dined  in  great  deal  of  state,  the  royalle  company  by 
themselves  in  the  coache,  which  was  a  blessed  sight  to  see." 
This  royal  company  consisted  of  Charles,  the  Dukes  of  York 
and  Gloucester,  his  brothers,  the  Queen  of  Bohemia,  the  Prin- 
cess Royal,  the  Prince  of  Orange,  afterward  William  III. — all 
of  whose  hands  Pepys  kissed,  after  dinner.  The  King  and 
Duke  of  York  changed  the  names  of  the  ships.  The  "  Rump- 
ers,"  as  Pepys  called  the  Parliamentarians,  had  given  one  the 
name  of  the  "  Nazeby ;"  that  was  now  christened  the  "  Charles ;" 
"  Richard"  was  changed  into  "  James."  The  "  Speaker"  into 
"  Mary,"  the  "  Lambert"  was  "  Henrietta,"  and  so  on.  How 
merry  the  king  must  have  been  while  he  thus  turned  the 


16 

Roundheads,  as  it  were,  off  the  ocean ;  and  how  he  walked 
here  and  there,  up  and  down  (quite  contrary  to  what  Samuel 
Pepys  "expected"),  and  fell  into  discourse  of  his  escape  from 
Worcester,  and  made  Samuel  "  ready  to  weep"  to  hear  of  his 
traveling  four  days  and  three  nights  on  foot,  up  to  his  knees 
in  dirt,  with  "  nothing  but  a  green  coat  and  pair  of  breeches 
on"  (worse  and  worse,  thought  Pepys),  and  a  pair  of  country 
shoes  that  made  his  feet  sore ;  and  how,  at  one  place,  he  was 
made  to  drink  by  the  servants,  to  show  he  was  not  a  Round- 
head ;  and  how,  at  another  place — and  Charles,  the  best  teller 
of  a  story  in  his  own  dominions,  may  here  have  softened  his 
tone — the  master  of  the  house,  an  inn-keeper,  as  the  king  was 
standing  by  the  fire,  with  his  hands  on  the  back  of  a  chair, 
kneeled  down  and  kissed  his  hand  "  privately,"  saying  he  could 
not  ask  him  who  he  was,  but  bid  "  God  bless  him,  where  he 
was  going !" 

Then,  rallying  after  this  touch  of  pathos,  Charles  took  his 
hearers  over  to  Fecamp,  in  France — thence  to  Rouen,  where, 
he  said,  in  his  easy,  irresistible  way,  "  I  looked  so  poor  that 
the  people  went  into  the  rooms  before  I  went  away,  to  see  if  I 
had  not  stolen  something  or  other." 

With  what  reverence  and  sympathy  did  our  Pepys  listen ! 
but  he  was  forced  to  hurry  off  to  get  Lord  Berkeley  a  bed ;  and 
with  "  much  ado"  (as  one  may  believe)  'he  did  get  "  him  to 
bed  with  my  Lord  Middlesex ;"  so,  after  seeing  these  two 
peers  of  the  realm  in  that  undignified  predicament — two  in  a 
bed — "  to  my  cabin  again,"  where  the  company  were  still  talk- 
ing of  the  king's  difficulties,  and  how  his  Majesty  was  fain  to 
eat  a  piece  of  bread  and  cheese  out  of  a  poor  body's  pocket ; 
and,  at  a  Catholic  house,  how  he  lay  a  good  while  "  in  the 
Priest's  Hole,  for  privacy." 

In  all  these  hairbreadth  escapes — of  which  the  king  spoke 
with  infinite  humor  and  good  feeling — one  name  was  perpetu- 
ally introduced  :  George — George  Villiers,  Villers,  as  the  royal 
narrator  called  him ;  for  the  name  was  so  pronounced  formerly. 
And  well  he  might ;  for  George  Villiers  had  been  his  playmate, 
classfellow,  nay,  bedfellow  sometimes,  in  priests'  holes ;  their 
names,  their  haunts,  their  hearts,  were  all  assimilated ;  and 
misfortune  had  bound  them  closely  to  each  other.  To  George 
Villiers  let  us  now  turn ;  he  is  waiting  for  his  royal  master  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Channel — in  England.  And  a  strange 
character  have  we  to  deal  with : 

"A  man  so  various,  that  he  seemed  to  be 
Not  one,  but  all  mankind's  epitome : 
Stiff  in  opinions,  always  in  the  wrong, 
Was  every  thing  by  starts,  and  nothing  long ; 


GEOEGE  VILLIEES'   INHERITANCE.  17 

But,  in  the  course  of  one  revolving  moon, 
Was  chemist,  fiddler,  statesman,  and  buffoon."* 

Such  was  George  Yilliers :  the  Alcibiades  of  that  age.     Let  us     \ 
trace  one  of  the  most  romantic,  and  brilliant,  and  unsatisfac- 
tory lives  that  has  ever  been  written. 

George  Villiers  was  born  at  Wallingford  House,  in  the  par- 
ish of  St.  Martin's-in-the-Fields,  on  the  30th  January,  1627. 
The  Admiralty  now  stands  on  the  site  of  the  mansion  in  which 
he  first  saw  the  light.  His  father  was  George  Villiers,  the  fa- 
vorite of  James  I.  and  Charles  I. ;  his  mother,  the  Lady  Kath- 
erine  Manners,  daughter  and  heiress  of  Francis,  Earl  of  Rut- 
land. Scarcely,  was  he  a  year  old,  when  the  assassination  of 
his  father,  by  Felton,  threw  the  affairs  of  his  family  into  con- 
fusion. His  mother,  after  the  Duke  of  Buckingham's  death, 
gave  birth  to  a  son,  Francis ;  who  was,  subsequently,  savagely 
killed  by  the  Roundheads,  near  Kingston.  Then  the  Duchess 
of  Buckingham  very  shortly  married  again,  and  uniting  her- 
self to  Randolph  Macdonald,  Earl  of  Antrim,  became  a  rigid 
Catholic.  She  was  therefore  lost  to  her  children,  or  rather, 
they  were  lost  to  her ;  for  King  Charles  I.,  who  had  promised 
to  be  a  "  husband  to  her,  and  a  father  to  her  children,"  removed 
them  from  her  charge,  and  educated  them  with  the  royal 
princes. 

The  youthful  peer  soon  gave  indications  of  genius ;  and  all 
that  a  careful  education  could  do,  was  directed  to  improve  his 
natural  capacity  under  private  tutors.  He  went  to  Cambridge ; 
and  thence,  under  the  care  of  a  preceptor  named  Aylesbury, 
traveled  into  France.  He  was  accompanied  by  his  young, 
handsome,  fine-spirited  brother,  Francis ;  and  this  was  the  sun- 
shine of  his  life.  His  father  had  indeed  left  him,  as  his  biog- 
rapher Brian  Fairfax  expresses  it,  "  the  greatest  name  in  En- 
gland ;  his  mother,  the  greatest  estate  of  any  subject."  With 
this  inheritance  there  had  also  descended  to  him  the  wonder- 
ful beauty,  the  matchless  grace,  of  his  ill-fated  father.  Great 
abilities,  courage,  fascination  of  manners,  were  also  his ;  but 
he  had  not  been  endowed  with  firmness  of  character,  but  was 
at  once  energetic  and  versatile.  Even  at  this  age,  the  quali- 
ties which  became  his  ruin  were  clearly  discoverable. 

George  Villiers  was  recalled  to  England  by  the  troubles 
which  drove  the  King  to  Oxford,  and  which  converted  that 
academical  city  into  a  garrison,  its  under-graduates  into  sol- 
diers, its  ancient  halls  into  barrack-rooms.  Villiers  was  on 
this  occasion  entered  at  Christ  Church :  the  youth's*  best  feel- 
ings were  aroused,  and  his  loyalty  was  engaged  to  one  to 
whom  his  father  owed  so  much.  He  was  now  a  young  man 

*  Dry  den. 


18  TWO    GALLANT  YOUNG  NOBLEMEN. 

of  twenty-one  years  of  age — able  to  act  for  himself;  and  he 
went  heart  and  soul  into  the  cause  of  his  sovereign.  Never 
was  there  a  gayer,  a  more  prepossessing  Cavalier.  He  could 
charm  even  a  Roundhead.  The  harsh  and  Presbyterian-mind- 
ed Bishop  Burnet,  has  told  us  that  "  he  was  a  man  of  a  noble 
presence  ;  had  a  great  liveliness  of  wit,  and  a  peculiar  faculty 
of  turning  every  thing  into  ridicule,  with  bold  figures  and  nat- 
ural descriptions."  How  invaluable  he  must  have  been  in  the 
Common-rooms  at  Oxford,  then  turned  into  guard-rooms,  his 
eye  upon  some  unlucky  volunteer  Don,  who  had  put  off  his 
clerkly  costume  for  a  buff  jacket,  and  could  not  manage  his 
drill.  Irresistible  as  his  exterior  is  declared  to  have  been,  the 
original  mind  of  Villiers  was  even  far  more  influential.  De 
Grammont  tells  us,  "  he  was  extremely  handsome,  but  still 
thought  himself  much  more  so  than  he  really  was;  although 
he  had  a  great  deal  of  discernment,  yet  his  vanities  made  him 
mistake  some  civilities  as  intended  for  his  person  which  were 
only  bestowed  on  his  wit  and  drollery." 

But  this  very  vanity,  so  unpleasant  in  an  old  man,  is  only 
amusing  in  a  younger  wit.  While  thus  a  gallant  of  the  court 
and  camp,  the  young  nobleman  proved  himself  to  be  no  less 
brave  than  witty.  Juvenile  as  he  was,  with  a  brother  still 
younger,  they  fought  on  the  royalist  side  at  Lichfield,  in  the 
storming  of  the  Cathedral  Close.  For  thus  allowing  their 
lives  to  be  endangered,  their  mother  blamed  Lord  Gerard,  one 
of  the  Duke's  guardians ;  while  the  Parliament  seized  the  pre- 
text of  confiscating  their  estates,  which  were  afterward  re- 
turned to  them,  on  account  of  their  being  under  age  at  the 
time  of  confiscation.  The  youths  were  then  placed  under  the 
care  of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  by  whose  permission  they 
traveled  in  France  and  Italy,  where  they  appeared — their  es- 
tates having  been  restored — with  princely  magnificence.  Nev- 
ertheless, on  hearing  of  the  imprisonment  of  Charles  I.  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  the  gallant  youths  returned  to  England,  and 
joined  the  army  under  the  Earl  of  Holland,  who  was  defeated 
near  Nonsuch,  in  Surrey. 

A  sad  episode  in  the  annals  of  these  eventful  times  is  pre- 
sented in  the  fate  of  the  handsome,  brave  Francis  Villiers. 
His  murder,  for  one  can  call  it  by  no  other  name,  shows  how 
keenly  the  personal  feelings  of  the  Roundheads  were  engaged 
in  this  national  quarrel.  Under  most  circumstances,  English- 
men would  have  spared  the  youth,  and  respected  the  gallantry 
of  the  free  young  soldier,  who,  planting  himself  against  an 
oak-tree  which  grew  in  the  road,  refused  to  ask  for  quarter, 
but  defended  himself  against  several  assailants.  But  the  name 
of  Villiers  was  hateful  in  Puritan  ears.  "  Hew  them  down, 


THE   BRAVE   FRANCIS   VILLIERS.  19 

root  and  branch !"  was  the  sentiment  that  actuated  the  sol- 
diery. His  very  loveliness  exasperated  their  vengeance.  At 
last,  "  with  nine  wounds  on  his  beautiful  face  and  body,"  says 
Fairfax,  "  he  was  slain."  "  The  oak-tree,"  writes  the  devoted 
servant,  "  is  his  monument,"  and  the  letters  of  F.  V.  were  cut 
in  it  in  his  day.  His  body  was  conveyed  by  water  to  York 
House,  and  was  entombed  with  that  of  his  father,  in  the  Chapel 
of  Henry  VII. 

His  brother  fled  toward  St.  Neot's,  where  he  encountered  a 
strange  kind  of  peril.  Tobias  Rustat  attended  him ;  and  "was 
with  him  in  the  rising  in  Kent  for  King  Charles  I.,  wherein 
the  Duke  was  engaged  ;  and  they,  being  put  to  the  flight,  the 
Duke's  helmet,  by  a  brush  under  a  tree,  was  turned  upon  his 
back,  and  tied  so  fast  with  a  string  under  his  throat,  that  with- 
out the  present  help  of  T.  R.,"  writes  Fairfax,  "it  had  undoubt- 
edly choked  him,  as  I  have  credibly  heard."* 

While  at  St.  Neot's,  the  house  in  which  Villiers  had  taken 
refuge  was  surrounded  with  soldiers.  He  had  a  stout  heart, 
and  a  dextrous  hand ;  he  took  his  resolution ;  rushed  out  upon 
his  foes,  killed  the  officer  in  command,  galloped  off  and  joined 
the  Prince  in  the  Downs. 

The  sad  story  of  Charles  I.  was  played  out ;  but  Villiers  re- 
mained stanch,  and  was  permitted  to  return  and  to  accompany 
Prince  Charles  into  Scotland.  Then  came  the  battle  of  Wor- 
cester in  1651 :  there  Charles  II.  showed  himself  a  worthy  de- 
scendant of  James  IV.  of  Scotland.  He  resolved  to  conquer 
or  die :  with  desperate  gallantry  the  English  Cavaliers  and  the 
Scotch  Highlanders  seconded  the  monarch's  valiant  onslaught 
on  Cromwell's  horse,  whose  invincible  Life  Guards  were  al- 
most driven  back  by  the  shock.  But  they  were  not  seconded ; 
Charles  II.  had  his  horse  twice  shot  under  him,  but,  nothing 
daunted,  he  was  the  last  to  tear  himself  away  from  the  field, 
and  then  only  upon  the  solicitations  of  his  friends. 

Charles  retired  to  Kidderminster  that  evening.  The  Duke 
of  Buckingham,  the  gallant  Lord  Derby,  Wilmotj  afterward 
Earl^ojLKochester,  and  some  others,  rode  near  him.  They 
were  followed  by  a  small  body  of  horse.  Disconsolately  they 
rode  on  northward,  a  faithful  band  of  sixty  being  resolved  to 
escort  his  Majesty  to  Scotland.  At  length  they  halted  on  Kin- 
ver  Heath,  near  Kidderminster,  their  guide  having  lost  the 

*  The  day  after  the  battle  at  Kingston  the  Duke's  estates  were  confiscated 
(8th  July,  1648). — Nichols'  History  of  Leicestershire,  iii.  213 ;  who  also  says 
that  the  Duke  offered  marriage  to  one  of  the  daughters  of  Cromwell,  but  was 
refused.  He  went  abroad  in  1648,  but  returned  with  Charles  II.  to  Scotland 
in  1650,  and  again  escaped  to  France  after  the  battle  of  Worcester,  1651. 
The  sale  of  the  pictures  would  seem  to  have  commenced  during  his  first  exile. 


20  AFTEK  THE   BATTLE    OP   WORCESTER. 

way.  In  this  extremity  Lord  Derby  said  that  he  had  been  re- 
ceived kindly  at  an  old  house  in  a  secluded  woody  country, 
between  Tong  Castle  and  Brewood,  on  the  borders  of  Staf- 
fordshire. It  was  named  "  Boscobel,"  he  said ;  and  that  word 
has  henceforth  conjured  up  to  the  mind's  eye  the  remembrance 
of  a  band  of  tired  heroes  riding  through  woody  glades  to  an 
ancient  house,  where  shelter  was  given  to  the  worn-out  horses 
and  scarcely  less  harassed  riders. 

But  not  so  rapidly  did  they  in  reality  proceed.  A  Catho- 
lic family,  named  Giffard,  were  living  at  White-Ladies,  about 
twenty-six  miles  from  Worcester.  This  was  only  about  half 
a  mile  from  Boscobel:  it  had  been  a  convent  of  Cistercian  nuns, 
whose  long  white  cloaks  of  old  had  once  been  seen,  ghost-like, 
amid  forest  glades  or  on  hillock  green.  The  White-Ladies  had 
other  memories  to  grace  it  besides  those  of  holy  vestals  or  of 
unholy  Cavaliers.  From  the  time  of  the  Tudors,  a  respecta- 
ble family  named  Somers  had  owned  the  White-Ladies,  and  in- 
habited it  since  its  white-garbed  tenants  had  been  turned  out 
and  the  place  secularized.  "Somers's  House,"  as  it  was  called 
(though,  more  happily,  the  old  name  has  been  restored),  had 
received  Queen  Elizabeth  on  her  progress.  The  richly  cultiva- 
ted old  conventual  gardens  had  supplied  the  Queen  with  some 
famous  pears,  and,  in  the  fullness  of  her  approval  of  the  fruit, 
she  had  added  them  to  the  City  arms.  At  that  time  one  of 
these  vaunted  pear-trees  stood  securely  in  the  market-place  of 
Worcester. 

At  the  White-Ladies  Charles  rested  for  half  an  hour ;  and 
here  he  left  his  garters,  waistcoat,  and  other  garments,  to 
avoid  discovery,  ere  he  proceeded.  They  were  long  kept  as 
relics. 

The  mother  of  Lord  Somers  had  been  placed  in  this  old 
house  for  security,  for  she  was  on  the  eve  of  giving  birth  to 
the  future  statesman,  who  was  born  in  that  sanctuary  just  at 
this  time.  His  father  at  that  very  moment  commanded  a 
troop  of  horse  in  Cromwell's  army,  so  that  the  risk  the  Cava- 
liers ran  was  imminent.  The  King's  horse  was  led  into  the 
hall.  Day  was  dawning ;  and  the  Cavaliers,  as  they  entered 
the  old  conventual  tenement,  and  saw  the  sunbeams  on  its 
walls,  perceived  their  peril.  A  family  of  servants  named  Pen- 
derell  held  various  offices  there  and  at  Boscobel.  William 
took  care  of  Boscobel ;  George  was  a  servant  at  White-La- 
dies ;  Humphrey  was  the  miller  to  that  house ;  Richard  lived 
close  by,  at  Hebbal  Grange.  He  and  William  were  called  into 
the  royal  presence.  Lord  Derby  then  said  to  them,  "  This  is 
the  King ;  have  a  care  of  him,  and  preserve  him  as  thou  didst 


DISGUISING   THE   KING. VILLIERS    IN    HIDING.  21 

Then  the  attendant  courtiers  began  undressing  the  King. 
They  took  off  his  buff-coat,  and  put  on  him  a  "  noggon  coarse 
shirt,"  and  a  green  suit  and  another  doublet — Richard  Pen- 
derell's  woodman's  dress.  Lord  Wilmot  cut  his  sovereign's 
hair  with  a  knife,  but  Richard  Penderell  took  up  his  shears 
and  finished  the  work.  "  Burn  it,"  said  the  king ;  but  Rich- 
ard kept  the  sacred  locks.  Then  Charles  covered  his  dark  face 
with  soot.  Could  any  thing  have  taken  away  the  expression 
of  his  half-sleepy,  half-merry  eyes  ? 

They  departed,  and  half  an  hour  afterward  Colonel  Ashen- 
hurst,  with  a  troop  of  Roundhead  horse,  rode  up  to  the  White- 
Ladies.  The  King,  meantime,  had  been  conducted  by  Richard 
Penderell  into  a  coppice-wood,  with  a  bill-hook  in  his  hands  for 
defense  and  disguise.  But  his  followers  were  overtaken  near 
Newport ;  and  here  Buckingham,  with  Lords  Talbot  and  Lev- 
iston,  escaped,  and  henceforth,  until  Charles's  wanderings  were 
transferred  from  England  to  France,  George  Villiers  was  sep- 
arated from  the  Prince.  Accompanied  by  the  Earls  of  Derby 
and  Lauderdale,  and  by  Lord  Talbot,  he  proceeded  northward, 
in  hopes  of  joining  General  Leslie  and  the  Scotch  horse.  But 
their  hopes  were  soon  dashed :  attacked  by  a  body  of  Round- 
heads, Buckingham  and  Lord  Leviston  were  compelled  to  leave 
the  high  road,  to  alight  from  their  horses,  and  to  make  their 
way  to  Bloore  Park,  near  Newport,  where  Villiers  found  a  shel- 
ter. He  was  soon,  however,  necessitated  to  depart :  he  put  on 
a  laborer's  dress ;  he  deposited  his  George,  a  gift  from  Henri- 
etta Maria,  with  a  companion,  and  set  off  for  Billstrop,  in  Not- 
tinghamshire, one  Matthews,  a  carpenter,  acting  as  his  guide ; 
at  Billstrop  he  was  welcomed  by  Mr.  Hawley,  a  Cavalier ;  and 
from  that  place  he  went  to  Brookesby,  in  Leicestershire,  the 
original  seat  of  the  Villiers  family,  and  the  birth-place  of  his 
father.  Here  he  was  received  by  Lady  Villiers — the  widow, 
probably,  of  his  father's  brother,  Sir  William  Villiers — one  of 
those  contented  country  squires  who  not  only  sought  no  dis- 
tinction, but  scarcely  thanked  James  I.  when  he  made  him  a 
baronet.  Here  might  the  hunted  refugee  see,  on  the  open 
battlements  of  the  church,  the  shields  on  which  were  exhibit- 
ed united  quarterings  of  his  father's  family  with  those  of  his 
mother ;  here,  listen  to  old  tales  about  his  grandfather,  good 
Sir  George,  who  married  a  serving-woman  in  his  deceased  wife's 
kitchen  ;*  and  that  serving-woman  became  the  leader  of  fash- 

*  Sir  George  Villiers's  second  wife  was  Mary,  daughter  of  Antony  Beau- 
mont, Esq.,  of  Glenfield  (Nichols'  Leicestershire,  iii.  193),  who  was  son  of 
"VVm.  Beaumont,  Esq.,  of  Cole  Orton.  She  afterward  was  married  succes- 
sively to  Sir  Wm.  Rayner  and  Sir  Thomas  Compton,  and  was  created  Count- 
ess of  Buckingham  in  1G18. 


22  VILLIEBS    APPEARS   AS    A   MOUNTEBANK. 

ions  in  the  court  of  James.  Here  he  might  ponder  on  the  vi- 
cissitudes which  marked  the  destiny  of  the  house  of  Villiers, 
and  wonder  what  should  come  next. 

That  the  spirit  of  adventure  was  strong  within  him,  is  shown 
by  his  daring  to  go  up  to  London,  and  disguising  himself  as  a 
mountebank.  He  had  a  coat  made,  called  a  "Jack  Pudding 
Coat :"  a  little  hat  was  stuck  on  his  head,  with  a  fox's  tail  in 
it,  and  cocks'  feathers  here  and  there.  A  wizard's  mask  one 
day,  a  daubing  of  flour  another,  completed  the  disguise  it  was 
then  so  usual  to  Assume :  witness  the  long  traffic  held  at  Ex- 
eter Change  by  the  Duchess  of  Tyrconnel,  Frances  Jennings, 
in  a  white  mask,  selling  laces  and  French  gew-gaws,  a  trader 
to  all  appearance,  but  really  carrying  on  political  intrigues ; 
every  one  went  to  chat  with  the  "White  Milliner,"  as  she  was 
called,  during  the  reign  of  William  and  Mary.  The  Duke  next 
erected  a  stage  at  Charing  Cross — in  the  very  face  of  the  stern 
Rumpers,  who,  with  long  faces,  rode  past  the  sinful  man  each 
day  as  they  came  ambling  up  from  the  Parliament  House.  A 
band  of  puppet-players  and  violins  set  up  their  shows;  and  mu- 
sic covers  a  multitude  of  incongruities.  The  ballad  was  then 
the  great  vehicle  of  personal  attack,  and  Villiers's  dawning 
taste  for  poetry  was  shown  in  the  ditties  which  he  now  com- 
posed, and  in  which  he  sometimes  assisted  vocally.  While  all 
the  other  Cavaliers  were  forced  to  fly,  he  thus  bearded  his  en- 
emies in  their  very  homes :  sometimes  he  talked  to  them  face 
to  face,  and  kept  the  sanctimonious  citizens  in  talk  till  they 
found  themselves  sinfully  disposed  to  laugh.  But  this  vagrant 
life  had  serious  evils:  it  broke  down  all  the  restraints  which 
civilized  society  naturally  and  beneficially  imposes.  The  Duke 
of  Buckingham,  Butler,  the  author  of  Hudibras,  writes,  "rises, 
eats,  goes  to  bed  by  the  Julian  account,  long  after  all  others 
that  go  by  the  new  style,  and  keeps  the  same  hours  with  owls 
and  the  Antipodes.  He  is  a  great  observer  of  the  Tartar  cus- 
toms, and  never  eats  till  the  great  cham,  having  dined,  makes 
proclamation  that  all  the  world  may  go  to  dinner.  He  does 
not  dwell  in  his  house,  but  haunts  it  like  an  evil  spirit,  that 
walks  all  night,  to  disturb  the  family,  and  never  appears  by 
day.  He  lives  perpetually  benighted,  runs  out  of  his  life,  and 
loses  his  time  as  men  do  their  ways  in  the  dark :  and  as  blind 
men  are  led  by  their  dogs,  so  he  is  governed  by  some  mean 
servant  or  other  that  relates  to  his  pleasures.  He  is  as  incon- 
stant as  the  moon  which  he  lives  under ;  and  although  he  does 
nothing  but  advise  with  his  pillow  all  day,  he  is  as  great  a 
stranger  to  himself  as  he  is  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  His  mind 
entertains  all  things  that  come  and  go ;  but  like  guests  and 
strangers,  they  are  not  welcome  if  they  stay  long.  This  lays 


VILLIEBS  IN  DISGUISE — TIIE  MEETING   WITH  HIS  SISTER. 


A    DARING   ADVENTURE.  25 

him  open  to  all  cheats,  quacks,  and  impostors,  who  apply  to 
every  particular  humor  while  it  lasts,  and  afterward  vanish. 
He  deforms  nature  while  he  intends  to  adorn  her,  like  Indians 
that  hang  jewels  in  their  lips  and  noses.  His  ears  are  perpet- 
ually drilling  with  a  fiddlestick,  and  endures  pleasures  with  less 
patience  than  other  men  do  their  pains." 

The  more  effectually  to  support  his  character  as  a  mounte- 
bank, Villiers  sold  mithridate  and  galbanum  plasters :  thou- 
sands of  spectators  and  customers  thronged  every  day  to  see 
and  hear  him.  Possibly  many  guessed  that  beneath  all  this 
fantastic  exterior  some  ulterior  project  was  concealed ;  yet  he 
remained  untouched  by  the  City  Guards.  Well  did  Dryden 
describe  him : 

"Then  all  for  women,  painting,  rhyming,  drinking, 
Besides  ten  thousand  freaks  that  died  in  thinking. 
Blest  madman,  who  could  every  hour  employ 
With  something  new  to  wish  or  to  enjoy !" 

His  elder  sister,  Lady  Mary  Villiers,  had  married  the  Duke 
of  Richmond,  one  of  the  loyal  adherents  of  Charles  I.  The 
duke  was,  therefore,  in  durance  at  Windsor,  while  the  duch- 
ess was  to  be  placed  under  strict  surveillance  at  Whitehall. 

Villiers  resolved  to  see  her.  Hearing  that  she  was  to  pass 
into  Whitehall  on  a  certain  day,  he  set  up  his  stage  where  she 
could  not  fail  to  perceive  him.  He  had  something  important 
to  say  to  her.  As  she  drew  near,  he  cried  out  to  the  mob  that 
he  would  give  them  a  song  on  the  Duchess  of  Richmond  and 
the  Duke  of  Buckingham :  nothing  could  be  more  acceptable. 
"  The  mob,"  it  is  related,  "  stopped  the  coach  and  the  duchess. 
.  .  .  Nay,  so  outrageous  were  the  mob,  that  they  forced  the 
duchess,  who  was  then  the  handsomest  woman  in  England,  to 
sit  in  the  boot  of  the  coach,  and  to  hear  him  sing  all  his  im- 
pertinent songs.  Having  left  off  singing,  he  told  them  it  was 
no  more  than  reason  that  he  should  present  the  duchess  with 
some  of  the  songs.  So  he  alighted  from  his  stage,  covered  all 
over  with  papers  and  ridiculous  little  pictures.  Having  come 
to  the  coach,  he  took  off  a  black  piece  of  taffeta,  which  he  al- 
ways wore  over  one  of  his  eyes,  when  his  sister  discovered  im- 
mediately who  he  was,  yet  had  so  much  presence  of  mind  as 
not  to  give  the  least  sign  of  mistrust ;  nay  she  gave  him  some 
very  opprobrious  language,  but  was  very  eager  at  snatching 
the  papers  he  threw  into  her  coach.  Among  them  was  a 
packet  of  letters,  wThich  she  had  no  sooner  got  but  she  went 
forward,  the  duke,  at  the  head  of  the  mob,  attending  and  hal- 
looing her  a  good  way  out  of  the  town." 

A  still  more  daring  adventure  was  contemplated  also  by 

B 


26  CROMWELL'S  SAINTLY  DAUGHTER. 

this  young,  irresistible  duke.  Bridget  Cromwell,  the  eldest 
daughter  of  Oliver,  was,  at  that  time,  a  bride  of  twenty-six 
years  of  age;  having  married,  in  1647,  the  saintly  Henry  Ire- 
ton,  Lord  Deputy  of  Ireland.  Bridget  was  the  pattern  hero- 
ine of  the  "  unco  guid"  the  quintessence  of  all  propriety ;  the 
impersonation  of  sanctity ;  an  ultra  republican,  who  scarcely 
accorded  to  her  father  the  modest  title  of  Protector.  She  was 
esteemed  by  her  party  a  "personage  of  sublime  growth:" 
"  humbled,  not  exalted,"  according  to  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  by  her 
elevation :  "  nevertheless,"  says  that  excellent  lady,  "  as  my 
Lady  Ireton  was  walking  in  the  St.  James's  Park,  the  Lady 
Lambert,  as  proud  as  her  husband,  came  by  where  she  was, 
and  as  the  present  princess  always  hath  precedency  of  the 
relict  of  the  dead,  so  she  put  by  my  Lady  Ireton,  who,  not- 
withstanding her  piety  and  humility,  was  a  little  grieved  at 
the  affront." 

After  this  anecdote  one  can  not  give  much  credence  to  this 
lady's  humility :  Bridget  was,  however,  a  woman  of  powerful 
intellect,  weakened  by  her  extreme,  and  to  use  a  now  common 
term,  crotchety  opinions.  Like  most  esprits  forts,  she  was 
easily  imposed  upon.  One  day  this  paragon  saw  a  mounte- 
bank dancing  on  a  stage  in  the  most  exquisite  style.  His  fine 
shape,  too,  caught  the  attention  of  one  who  assumed  to  be 
above  all  folly.  It  is  sometimes  fatal  to  one's  peace  to  look 
out  of  a  window ;  no  one  knows  what  sights  may  rivet  or  dis- 
please. Mistress  Ireton  was  sitting  at  her  window  unconscious 
that  any  one  with  the  hated  and  malignant  name  of  "  Villiers" 
was  before  her.  After  some  unholy  admiration,  she  sent  to 
speak  to  the  mummer.  The  duke  scarcely  knew  whether  to 
trust  himself  in  the  power  of  the  bloodthirsty  Ireton's  bride  or 
not — yet  his  courage — his  love  of  sport — prevailed.  He  visit- 
ed her  that  evening :  no  longer,  however,  in  his  jack-pudding 
coat,  but  in  a  rich  suit,  disguised  with  a  cloak  over  it.  He 
wore  still  a  plaster  over  one  eye,  and  was  much  disposed  to 
take  it  off,  but  prudence  forbade ;  and  thus  he  stood  in  the 
presence  of  the  prim  and  saintly  Bridget  Ireton.  The  partic- 
ulars of  the  interview  rest  on  his  statement,  and  they  must 
not,  therefore,  be  accepted  implicitly.  Mistress  Ireton  is  said 
to  have  made  advances  to  the  handsome  incognito.  What  a 
triumph  to  a  man  like  Villiers,  to  have  intrigued  with  my  Lord 
Protector's  sanctified  daughter !  But  she  inspired  him  with 
disgust.  He  saw  in  her  the  presumption  and  hypocrisy  of 
her  father;  he  hated  her  as  Cromwell's  daughter  and  Ire- 
ton's  wife.  He  told  her,  therefore,  that  he  was  a  Jew,  and 
could  not  by  his  laws  become  the  paramour  of  a  Christian 
woman.  The  saintly  Bridget  stood  amazed ;  she  had  impru- 


VILLIEKS   AND   THE   RABBI.  27 

dently  let  him  into  some  of  the  most  important  secrets  of  her 
party*  A  Jew !  It  was  dreadful !  But  how  could  a  person 
of  that  persuasion  be  so  strict,  so  strait-laced  ?  She  probably 
entertained  all  the  horror  of  Jews  which  the  Puritanical  party 
cherished  as  a  virtue;  forgetting  the  lessons  of  toleration  and 
liberality  inculcated  by  Holy  Writ.  She  sent,  however,  for  a 
certain  Jewish  Rabbi  to  converse  with  the  stranger.  What 
was  the  Duke  of  Buckingham's  surprise,  on  visiting  her  one 
evening,  to  see  the  learned  doctor  armed  at  all  points  with  the 
Talmud,  and  thirsting  for  dispute,  by  the  side  of  the  saintly 
Bridget.  He  could  noways  meet  such  a  body  of  controversy ; 
but  thought  it  best  forthwith  to  set  off  for  the  Downs.  Be- 
fore he  departed  he  wrote,  however,  to  Mistress  Ireton,  on  the 
plea  that  she  might  wish  to  know  to  what  tribe  of  Jews  he 
belonged.  So  he  sent  her  a  note  written  with  all  his  native 
wit  and  point.* 

Buckingham  now  experienced  all  the  miseries  that  a  man 
of  expensive  pleasures  with  a  sequestrated  estate  is  likely  to 
endure.  One  friend  remained  to  watch  over  his  interests  in 
England.  This  was  John  Traylman,  a  servant  of  his  late  fa- 
ther's ;  who  was  left  to  guard  the  collection  of  pictures  made 
by  the  late  duke,  and  deposited  in  York  House.  That  collec- 
tion was,  in  the  opinion  of  competent  judges,  the  third  in  point 
of  value  in  England,  being  only  inferior  to  those  of  Charles  I. 
and  the  Earl  of  Arundel. 

It  had  been  bought,  with  immense  expense,  partly  by  the 
duke's  agents  in  Italy,  the  Mantua  Gallery  supplying  a  great 
portion — partly  in  France — partly  in  Flanders ;  and  to  Flan- 
ders a  great  portion  was  destined  now  to  return.  Secretly 
and  laboriously  did  old  Traylman  pack  up  and  send  off  these 
treasures  to  Antwerp,  where  now  the  gay  youth  whom  the 
aged  domestic  had  known  from  a  child  was  in  want  and  exile. 
The  pictures  were  eagerly  bought  by  a  foreign  collector  named 
Duart.  The  proceeds  gave  poor  Villiers  bread ;  but  the  noble 
works  of  Titian  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  and  others,  were  lost 
forever  to  England. 

It  must  have  been  very  irritating  to  Villiers  to  know  that 
while  he  just  existed  abroad,  the  great  estates  enjoyed  by  his 
father  were  being  .subjected  to  pillage  by  Cromwell's  soldiers, 
or  sold  for  pitiful  sums  by  the  Commissioners  appointed  by 
Parliament  to  break  up  and  annihilate  many  of  the  old  prop- 
erties in  England.  Burleigh-on-the-Hill,  the  stately  seat  on 
which  the  first  duke  had  lavished  thousands,  had  been  taken 
by  the  Roundheads.  It  was  so  large,  and  presented  so  long  a 
line  of  buildings  that  the  Parliamentarians  could  not  hold  it 

*  This  incident  is  taken  from  Madame  Dunois'  Memoirs,  part  i.  p.  86. 


28  .  YOIIK    HOUSE. 

without  leaving  in  it  a  great  garrison  and  stores  of  ammuni- 
tion. It  was  therefore  burnt,  and  the  stables  alone  occupied; 
and  those  even  were  formed  into  a  house  of  unusual  size. 
York  House  was  doubtless  marked  out  for  the  next  destruct- 
ive decree.  There  was  something  in  the  very  history  of  this 
house  which  might  be  supposed  to  excite  the  wrath  of  the 
Roundheads.  Queen  Mary  (whom  we  must  not,  after  Miss 
Strickland's  admirable  life  of  her,  call  Bloody  Queen  Mary, 
but  who  will  always  be  best  known  by  that  unpleasant  title) 
had  bestowed  York  House  on  the  See  of  York,  as  a  compen- 
sation for  York  House,  at  Whitehall,  which  Henry  VIII.  had 
taken  from  Wolsey.  It  had  afterward  come  into  possession 
of  the  Keepers  of  the  Great  Seal.  Lord  Bacon  was  born  in 
York  House,  his  father  having  lived  there ;  and  the 

"Greatest,  wisest,  meanest  of  mankind," 

built  here  an  aviary  which  cost  £300.  When  the  Duke  of 
Lennox  wished  to  buy  York  House,  Bacon  thus  wrote  to  him : 
"  For  this  you  will  pardon  me :  York  House  is  the  house  wrhere 
my  father  died,  and  where  I  first  breathed ;  and  there  will  I 
yield  my  last  breath,  if  it  so  please  God  and  the  King."  It 
did  not,  however,  please  the  King  that  he  should ;  the  house 
was  borrowed  only  by  the  first  Duke  of  Buckingham  from  the 
Archbishop  of  York,  and  then  exchanged  for  another  seat  on 
the  plea  that  the  duke  would  want  it  for  the  reception  of  for- 
eign potentates,  and  for  entertainments  given  to  royalty. 

The  duke  pulled  it  down :  and  the  house,  which  was  erect- 
ed as  a  temporary  structure,  was  so  superb  that  even  Pepys, 
twenty  years  after  it  had  been  left  to  bats  and  cobwebs,  speaks 
of  it  in  raptures,  as  of  a  place  in  which  the  great  duke's  soul  was 
seen  in  every  chamber.  On  the  walls  were  shields  on  which 
the  arms  of  Manners  and  of  Villiers — peacocks  and  lions — were 
quartered.  York  House  was  never,  however,  finished;  but, 
as  the  lover  of  old  haunts  enters  Buckingham  Street  in  the 
Strand,  he  will  perceive  an  ancient  water-gate,  beautifully  pro- 
portioned, built  by  Inigo  Jones — smoky,  isolated,  impaired — 
but  still  speaking  volumes  of  remembrance  of  the  glories  of 
the  assassinated  duke,  who  had  purposed  to  build  the  whole 
house  in  that  style. 

"  Yorschaux"  as  he  called  it — York  House — the  French  em- 
bassador  had  written  word  to  his  friends  at  home,  "  is  the  most 
richly  fitted  up  of  any  that  I  saw."  The  galleries  and  state 
rooms  were  graced  by  the  display  of  the  Roman  marbles,  both 
busts  and  statues,  which  the  first  duke  had  bought  from  Ru- 
bens ;  while  in  the  gardens  the  Cain  and  Abel  of  John  of  Bo- 
logna, given  by  Philip  IV.  of  Spain  to  King  Charles,  and  by 


VILLIERS    RETURNS   TO   ENGLAND.  29 

him  bestowed  on  the  elder  George  Yilliers,  made  that  fair 
pleasaunce  famous.  It  was  doomed — as  were  what  were  call- 
ed the  "  superstitious"  pictures  in  the  house — to  destruction : 
henceforth  all  was  in  decay  and  neglect.  "  I  went  to  see  York 
House  and  gardens,"  Evelyn  writes  in  1655,  "belonging  to  the 
former  greate  Buckingham,  but  now  much  ruined  through 
neglect." 

Traylman,  doubtless,  kept  George  Yilliers  the  younger  in 
full  possession  of  all  that  was  to  happen  to  that  deserted  tene- 
ment in  which  the  old  man  mourned  for  the  departed,  and 
thought  of  the  absent. 

The  intelligence  which  he  had  soon  to  communicate  was  all- 
important.  York  House  was  to  be  occupied  again ;  and  Crom- 
well and  his  coadjutors  had  bestowed  it  on  Fairfax.  The  blow 
was  perhaps  softened  by  the  reflection  that  Fairfax  was  a  man 
of  generous  temper ;  and  that  he  had  an  only  daughter,  Mary 
Fairfax,  young,  and  an  heiress.  Though  the  daughter  of  a 
Puritan,  a  sort  of  interest  was  attached,  even  by  Cavaliers,  to 
Mary  Fairfax,  from  her  having,  at  five  years  of  age,  followed 
her  father  through  the  civil  wars  on  horseback,  seated  before  a 
maid-servant ;  and  having,  on  her  journey,  frequently  fainted, 
and  was  so  ill  as  to  have  been  left  in  a  house  by  the  roadside, 
her  father  never  expecting  to  see  her  again. 

In  reference  to  this  young  girl,  then  about  eighteen  years  of 
age,  Buckingham  now  formed  a  plan.  He  resolved  to  return 
to  England  disguised,  and  to  offer  his  hand  to  Mary  Fairfax, 
and  so  recover  his  property  through  the  influence  of  Fairfax. 
He  was  confident  of  his  own  attractions ;  and,  indeed,  from 
every  account,  he  appears  to  have  been  one  of  those  reckless, 
handsome,  speculative  characters  that  often  take  the  fancy  of 
better  men  than  themselves.  "He  had,"  says  Burnet,  "no 
sort  of  literature,  only  he  was  drawn  into  chemistry ;  and  for 
some  years  he  thought  he  was  very  near  the  finding  of  the 
philosopher's  stone,  which  had  the  effect  that  attends  on  all 
such  men  as  he  was,  when  they  are  drawn  in,  to  lay  out  for  it. 
He  had  no  principles  of  religion,  virtue,  or  friendship ;  pleas- 
ure, frolic,  or  extravagant  diversion  was  all  he  laid  to  heart. 
He  was  true  to  nothing ;  for  he  was  not  true  to  himself.  He 
had  no  steadiness  nor  conduct ;  he  could  keep  no  secret,  nor 
execute  any  design  without  spoiling  it;  he  could  never  fix  his 
thoughts,  nor  govern  his  estate,  though  then  the  greatest  in 
England.  He  was  bred  about  the  king,  and  for  many  years  he 
had  a  great  ascendant  over  him ;  but  he  spoke  of  him  to  all 
persons  with  that  contempt,  that  at  last  he  drew  a  lasting  dis- 
grace upon  himself.  And  he  at  length  ruined  both  body  and 
mind,  fortune  and  reputation  equally." 


30  POOR   MARY   FAIRFAX. 

This  was  a  sad  prospect  for  poor  Mary  Fairfax,  but  certain- 
ly if  in  their  choice 

"Weak  women  go  astray, 

Their  stars  are  more  in  fault  than  they," 

and  she  was  less  to  blame  in  her  choice  than  her  father,  who 
ought  to  have  advised  her  against  the  marriage.  Where  and 
how  they  met  is  not  known.  Mary  was  not  attractive  in  per- 
son :  she  was  in  her  youth  little,  brown,  and  thin,  but  became 
a  "  short  fat  body,"  as  De  Grammont  tells  us,  in  her  early  mar- 
ried life ;  in  the  later  period  of  her  existence,  she  was  de- 
scribed by  the  Vicomtesse  de  Longueville  as  a  "  little  round 
crumpled  woman,  very  fond  of  finery ;"  and  she  adds  that,  on 
visiting  the  duchess  one  day,  she  found  her,  though  in  mourn- 
ing, in  a  kind  of  loose  robe  over  her,  all  edged  and  laced  with 
gold.  So  much  for  a  Puritan's  daughter. 

To  this  insipid  personage  the  duke  presented  himself.  She 
soon  liked  him,  and  in  spite  of  his  outrageous  infidelities,  con- 
tinued to  like  him  after  their  marriage. 

He  carried  his  point :  Mary  Fairfax  became  his  wife  on  the 
6th  of  September,  1657,  and,  by  the  influence  of  Fairfax,  his 
estate,  or,  at  all  events,  a  portion  of  the  revenues,  about  £4000 
a  year,  it  is  said,  were  restored  to  him.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
mortifying  to  find  that  in  1672,  he  sold  York  House,  in  which 
his  father  had  taken  such  pride,  for  £30,000.  The  house  was 
pulled  down ;  streets  were  erected  on  the  gardens :  George 
Street,  Villiers  Street,  Duke  Street,  Buckingham  Street,  Off 
Alley,  recall  the  name  of  the  ill-starred  George,  first  duke,  and 
of  his  needy,  profligate  son ;  but  the  only  trace  of  the  real 
greatness  of  the  family  importance  thus  swept  away  is  in  the 
motto  inscribed  on  the  point  of  old  Inigo's  water-gate,  toward 
the  street :  "  Fidei  coticula  crux."  It  is  sad  for  all  good  royal- 
ists to  reflect  that  it  was  not  the  rabid  Roundhead,  but  a  de- 
generate Cavalier,  who  sold  and  thus  destroyed  York  House. 

The  marriage  with  Mary  Fairfax,  though  one  of  interest 
solely,  was  not  a  mesalliance:  her  father  was  connected  by 
the  female  side  with  the  Earls  of  Rutland ;  he  was  also  a  man 
of  a  generous  spirit,  as  he  had  shown,  in  handing  over  to  the 
Countess  of  Derby  the  rents  of  the  Isle  of  Man,  which  had 
been  granted  to  him  by  the  Parliament.  In  a  similar  spirit 
he  was  not  sorry  to  restore  York  House  to  the  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham. 

Cromwell,  however,  was  highly  exasperated  by  the  nuptials 
between  Mary  Fairfax  and  Villiers,  which  took  place  at  Nun- 
Appleton,  near  York,  one  of  Fairfax's  estates.  The  Protector 
had,  it  is  said,  intended  Villiers  for  one  of  his  own  daughters. 


ABRAHAM    COWLEY,  THE   POET.  31 

Upon  what  plea  he  acted  it  is  not  stated  ;  he  committed  Vil- 
liers  to  the  Tower,  where  he  remained  until  the  death  of  Oliver, 
and  the  accession  of  Richard  Cromwell. 

In  vain  did  Fairfax  solicit  his  release  :  Cromwell  refused  it, 
and  Villiers  remained  in  durance  until  the  abdication  of  Rich- 
ard Cromwell,  when  he  was  set  at  liberty,  but  not  without  the 
following  conditions,  dated  February  21st,  1658-9  : — 

"  The'humble  petition  of  George  Duke  of  Buckingham  was 
this  day  read.  Resolved  that  George  Duke  of  Buckingham, 
now  prisoner  at  Windsor  Castle,  upon  his  engagement  upon 
his  honor  at  the  bar  of  this  House,  and  upon  the  engagement 
of  Lord  Fairfax  in  £20,000,  that  the  said  duke  shall  peaceably 
demean  himself  for  the  future,  and  shall  not  join  with,  or  abet, 
or  have  any  correspondence  with,  any  of  the  enemies  of  the 
Lord  Protector,  and  of  his  Commonwealth,  in  any  of  the  parts 
beyond  the  sea,  or  within  this  commonwealth,  shall  be  dis- 
charged of  his  imprisonment  and  restraint ;  and  that  the  Gov- 
ernor of  Windsor  Castle  be  required  to  bring  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  to  the  bar  of  this  House  on  Wednesday  next,  to 
engage  his  honor  accordingly.  Ordered,  that  the  security  of 
£20,000,  to  be  given  by  the  Lord  Fairfax,  on  the  behalf  of  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham,  be  taken  in  the  name  of  His  Highness 
the  Lord  Protector." 

During  his  incarceration  at  Windsor,  Buckingham  had  a 
companion,  of  whom  many  a  better  man  might  have  been  en- 
vious :  this  was  Abraham  Cowley,  an  old  college  friend  of  the 
duke's.  Cowley  was  the  son  of  a  grocer,  and  owed  his  en- 
trance into  academic  life  to  having  been  a  King's  Scholar  at 
Westminster.  One  day  he  happened  to  take  up  from  his  moth- 
er's parlor  window  a  copy  of  Spenser's  "  Faerie  Queene."  He 
eagerly  perused  the  delightful  volume,  though  he  was  then 
only  twelve  years  old :  and  this  impulse  being  given  to  his 
mind,  became  at  fifteen  a  reciter  of  verses.  His  "  Poetical 
Blossoms,"  published  while  he  was  still  at  school,  gave,  how- 
ever, no  foretaste  of  his  future  eminence.  He  proceeded  to 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  his  friendship  with  Villiers 
was  formed ;  and  where,  perhaps,  from  that  circumstance,  Cow- 
ley's  predilections  for  the  cause  of  the  Stuarts  was  ripened  into 
loyalty. 

No  two  characters  could  be  more  dissimilar  than  those  of 
Abraham  Cowley  and  George  Villiers.  Cowley  was  quiet, 
modest,  sober,  of  a  thoughtful,  philosophical  turn,  and  of  an 
affectionate  nature;  neither  boasting  of  his  own  merits  nor  de- 
preciating others.  He  was  the  friend  of  Lucius  Cary,  Lord 
Falkland ;  and  yet  he  loved,  though  he  must  have  condemned, 
George  Villiers.  It  is  not  unlikely  that,  while  Cowley  impart- 


32  THE   GREATEST   ORNAMENT   OF   WHITEHALL. 

ed  his  love  of  poetry  to  Yilliers,  Yilliers  may  have  inspired  the 
pensive  and  blameless  poet  with  a  love  of  that  display  of  wit 
then  in  vogue,  and  heightened  that  sense  of  humor  which  speaks 
forth  in  some  of  Cowley's  productions.  Few  authors  suggest  so 
many  new  thoughts,  really  his  own,  as  Cowley.  "His  works," 
it  has  been  said,  "  are  a  flower-garden  run  to  weeds,  but  the 
flowers  are  numerous  and  brilh'ant,  and  a  search  after  them  will 
well  repay  the  pains  of  a  collector  who  is  not  too  indolent  or 
fastidious." 

As  Cowley  and  his  friend  passed  the  weary  hours  in  durance, 
many  an  old  tale  could  the  poet  tell  the  peer  of  stirring  times ; 
for  Cowley  had  accompanied  Charles  I.  in  many  a  perilous  jour- 
ney, and  had  protected  Queen  Henrietta  Maria  in  her  escape 
to  France:  through  Cowley  had  the  correspondence  of  the  roy- 
al pair,  when  separated,  been  carried  on.  The  poet  had  before 
suffered  imprisonment  for  his  loyalty ;  and,  to  disguise  his  act- 
ual occupation,  had  obtained  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Medicine, 
and  assumed  the  character  of  a  physician,  on  the  strength  of 
knowing  the  virtues  of  a  few  plants. 

Many  a  laugh,  doubtless,  had  Buckingham  at  the  expense  of 
Dr.  Cowley  :  however,  in  later  days,  the  duke  proved  a  true 
friend  to  the  poet,  in  helping  to  procure  for  him  the  lease  of  a 
farm  at  Chertsey,  from  the  queen,  and  here  Cowley,  rich  upon 
£300  a  year,  ended  his  days. 

For  some  time  after  Buckingham's  release,  he  lived  quietly 
and  respectably  at  Nun-Appleton,  with  General  Fairfax  and  the 
vapid  Mary.  But  the  Restoration — the  first  dawnings  of  which 
have  been  referred  to  in  the  commencement  of  this  biography 
— ruined  him,  body  and  mind. 

He  was  made  a  Lord  of  the  Bedchamber,  a  Member  of  the 
Privy  Council,  and  afterward  Master  of  the  Horse,*  and  Lord 
Lieutenant  of  Yorkshire.  He  lived  in  great  magnificence  at 
Wallingford  House,  a  tenement  next  to  York  House,  intend- 
ed to  be  the  habitable  and  useful  appendage  to  that  palace. 

He  was  henceforth,  until  he  proved  treacherous  to  his  sov- 
ereign, the  brightest  ornament  of  Whitehall.  Beauty  of  per- 
son was  hereditary :  his  father  was  styled  the  "handsomest-bod- 
ied man  in  England,"  and  George  Yilliers  the  younger  equal- 
ed George  Yilliers  the  elder  in  all  personal  accomplishments. 
When  he  entered  the  Presence-Chamber  all  eyes  followed  him ; 
every  movement  was  graceful  and  stately.  Sir  John  Reresby 
pronounced  him  "  to  be  the  finest  gentleman  he  ever  saw." 
"He  was  born,"  Madame  Dunois  declared,  "for  gallantry  and 
magnificence."  His  wit  was  faultless,  but  his  manners  engag- 

*  The  duke  became  Master  of  the  Horse  in  1668 :  he  paid  £20,000  to  the 
Duke  of  Albemarle  for  the  post. 


BUCKINGHAM'S  WIT  AND  BEAUTY.  33 

ing ;  yet  his  sallies  often  descended  into  buffoonery,  and  lie 
spared  no  one  in  his  merry  moods.  One  evening  a  play  of 
Dryden's  was  represented.  An  actress  had  to  spout  forth  this 
line — 

"  My  wound  is  great  because  it  is  so  small !" 

She  gave  it  out  with  pathos,  paused,  and  was  theatrically  dis- 
tressed. Buckingham  was  seated  in  one  of  the  boxes.  He 
rose ;  all  eyes  were  fixed  upon  a  face  well  known  in  all  gay  as- 
semblies ;  in  a  tone  of  burlesque  he  answered, 

"Then  'twould  be  greater  were  it  none  at  all." 

Instantly  the  audience  laughed  at  the  duke's  tone  of  ridicule, 
and  the  poor  woman  was  hissed  off  the  stage. 

The  king  himself  did  not  escape  Buckingham's  shafts ;  "while 
Lord  Chancellor  Clarendon  fell  a  victim  to  his  ridicule ;  noth- 
ing could  withstand  it.  There,  not  in  that  iniquitous  gallery  at 
Whitehall,  but  in  the  "king's  privy  chambers,  Villiers  might  be 
seen  in  all  the  radiance  of  his  matured  beauty.  His  face  was 
long  and  oval,  with  sleepy,  yet  glistening  eyes,  over  which  large 
arched  eyebrows  seemed  to  contract  a  brow  on  which  the  curls 
of  a  massive  wig  (which  fell  almost  to  his  shoulders)  hung  low. 
His  nose  was  long,  well  formed,  and  flexible ;  his  lips  thin  and 
compressed,  and  defined,  as  the  custom  was,  by  two  very  short, 
fine,  black  patches  of  hair,  looking  more  like  strips  of  sticking- 
plaster  than  a  mustache.  As  he  made  his  reverence  his  rich 
robes  fell  over  a  faultless  form.  He  was  a  beau  to  the  very  fold 
of  the  cambric  band  round  his  throat ;  with  long  ends  of  the 
richest,  closest  point  that  was  ever  rummaged  out  from  a  for- 
eign nunnery  to  be  placed  on  the  person  of  this  sacrilegious 
sinner. 

Behold,  now,  how  he  changes.  Villiers  is  Villiers  no  lon- 
ger. He  is  Clarendon,  walking  solemnly  to  the  Court  of  the 
Star  Chamber :  a  pair  of  bellows  is  hanging  before  him  for 
the  purse;  Colonel  Titus  is  walking  with  a  "fire-shovel  on  his 
shoulder,  to  represent  a  mace ;  the  king,  himself  a  capital  mim- 
ic, is  splitting  his  sides  with  laughter ;  the  courtiers  are  fairly 
in  a  roar.  Then  how  he  was  wont  to  divert  the  king  with  his 
descriptions !  "  Ipswich,  for  instance,"  he  said,  "  was  a  town 
without  inhabitants  —  a  river  it  had  without  waters — streets 
without  names ;  and  it  was  a  place  where  asses  wore  boots :" 
alluding  to  the  asses,  when  employed  in  rolling  Lord  Here- 
ford's bowling-green,  having  boots  on  their  feet  to  prevent 
their  injuring  the  turf. 

Flecknoe,  the  poet,  describes  the  duke  at  this  period,  in 
"  Euterpe  Revived" — 

B2 


34  ANNA  MARIA,  COU&TESS   OF   SHREWSBURY. 

"  The  gallant'st  person,  and  the  noblest  minde, 
In  all  the  world  his  prince  could  ever  finde, 
Or  to  participate  his  private  cares, 
Or  bear  the  public  weight  of  his  affairs, 
Like  well-built  arches,  stronger  with  their  weight, 
And  well-built  minds,  the  steadier  with  their  height ; 
Such  was  the  composition  and  frame 
O'  the  noble  and  the  gallant  Buckingham." 

The  praise,  however,  even  in  the  duke's  best  days,  was  over- 
charged. Yilliers  was  no  "  well-built  arch,"  nor  could  Charles 
trust  to  the  fidelity  of  one  so  versatile  for  an  hour.  Besides, 
the  moral  character  of  Villiers  must  have  prevented  him,  even 
in  those  days,  from  bearing  "  the  public  weight  of  affairs." 

A  scandalous  intrigue  soon  proved  the  unsoundness  of  Fleck- 
noe's  tribute.  Among  the  most  licentious  beauties  of  the  court 
was  Anna  Maria,  Countess  of  Shrewsbury,  the  daughter  of  Rob- 
ert Brudenel,  Earl  of  Cardigan,  and  the  wife  of  Francis,  Earl  of 
Shrewsbury :  among  many  shameless  women  she  was  the  most 
shameless,  and  her  face  seems  to  have  well  expressed  her  mind. 
In  the  round,  fair  visage,  with  its  languishing  eyes,  and  full, 
pouting  mouth,  there  is  something  voluptuous  and  bold.  The 
forehead  is  broad,  but  low;  and  the  wavy  hair,  with  its  tendril 
curls,  comes  down  almost  to  the  fine  arched  eyebrows,  and  then, 
falling  into  masses,  sets  off  white  shoulders  which  seem  to  des- 
ignate an  inelegant  amount  of  embonpoint.  There  is  nothing 
elevated  in  the  whole  countenance,  as  Lely  has  painted  her,  and 
her  history  is  a  disgrace  to  her  age  and  time. 

She  had  numerous  lovers  (not  in  the  refined  sense  of  the 
word),  and,  at  last,  took  up  with  Thomas  Killigrew.  He  had 
been,  like  Villiers,  a  royalist :  first  a  page  to  Charles  L,  next 
a  companion  of  Charles  II.,  in  exile.  He  married  the  fair  Ce- 
cilia Croft ;  yet  his  morals  were  so  vicious  that  even  in  the 
Court  of  Venice  to  which  he  was  accredited,  in  order  to  bor- 
row money  from  the  merchants  of  that  city,  he  was  too  profli- 
gate to  remain.  He  came  back  with  Charles  II.,  and  was 
Master  of  the  Revels,  or  King's  Jester,  as  the  court  considered 
him,  though  without  any  regular  appointment,  during  his  life : 
the  butt,  at  once,  and  the  satirist  of  Whitehall. 

It  was  Killigrew's  wit  and  descriptive  powers  which,  when 
heightened  by  wine,  were  inconceivably  great,  that  induced 
Villiers  to  select  Lady  Shrewsbury  for  the  object  of  his  admi- 
ration. When  Killigrew  perceived  that  he  was  supplanted  by 
Villiers,  he  became  frantic  with  rage,  and  poured  out  the  bit- 
terest invectives  against  the  countess.  The  result  was  that,  one 
night,  returning  from  the  Duke  of  York's  apartments  at  St. 
James's,  three  passes  with  a  sword  were  made  at  him  through 
his  chair,  and  one  of  them  pierced  his  arm.  This,  and  other 


VILLIERS   AS    A   POET.  35 

occurrences,  at  last  aroused  the  attention  of  Lord  Shrewsbury, 
who  had  hitherto  never  doubted  his  wife :  he  challenged  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham ;  and  his  infamous  wife,  it  is  said,  held 
her  paramour's  horse,  disguised  as  a  page.  Lord  Shrewsbury 
was  killed,*  and  the  scandalous  intimacy  went  on  as  before. 
No  one  but  the  queen,  no  one  but  the  Duchess  of  Bucking- 
ham, appeared  shocked  at  this  tragedy,  and  no  one  minded 
their  remarks,  or  joined  in  their  indignation :  all  moral  sense 
was  suspended,  or  wholly  stifled ;  and  Villiers  gloried  in  his 
depravity,  more  witty,  more  amusing,  more  fashionable  than 
ever ;  and  yet  he  seems,  by  the  best  known  and  most  extolled 
of  his  poems,  to  have  had  some  conception  of  what  a  real  and 
worthy  attachment  might  be. 
The  following  verses  are  to  his  "  Mistress." 

"  What  a  dull  fool  was  I 

To  think  so  gross  a  lie, 
As  that  I  ever  was  in  love  before ! 
I  have,  perhaps,  known  one  or  two, 

With  whom  I  was  content  to  be 

At  that  which  they  call  keeping  company. 
But  after  all  that  they  could  do, 

I  still  could  be  with  more. 

Their  absence  never  made  me  shed  a  tear ; 

And  I  can  truly  swear, 
That,  till  my  eyes  first  gazed  on  you, 

I  ne'er  beheld  the  thing  I  could  adore. 

"A  world  of  things  must  curiously  be  sought : 
A  world  of  things  must  be  together  brought 

To  make  up  charms  which  have  the  power  to  move, 

Through  a  discerning  eye,  true  love ; 

That  is  a  master-piece  above 
What  only  looks  and  shape  can  do ; 
There  must  be  wit  and  judgment  too, 

Greatness  of  thought,  and  worth,  which  draw, 

From  the  whole  world,  respect  and  awe. 

"  She  that  would  raise  a  noble  love  must  find 
Ways  to  beget  a  passion  for  her  mind ; 
She  must  be  that  which  she  to  be  would  seem, 
For  all  true  love  is  grounded  on  esteem : 
Plainness  and  truth  gain  more  a  generous  heart 
Than  all  the  crooked  subtleties  of  art. 
She  must  be — what  said  I  ? — she  must  be  you: 
None  but  yourself  that  miracle  can  do. 
At  least,  I'm  sure,  thus  much  I  plainly  see, 
None  but  yourself  e'er  did  it  upon  me. 
'Tis  you  alone  that  can  my  heart  subdue, 
To  you  alone  it  always  shall  be  true." 

*  The  duel  with  the  Earl  of  Shrewsbury  took  place  on  the  17th  of  Janu- 
ary, 1667-8. 


36  VI£LIERS  AS  A  DRAMATIST. 

The  next  lines  are  also  remarkable  for  the  delicacy  and  hap- 
py turn  of  the  expressions — 

"  Though  Phillis,  from  prevailing  charms, 
Have  forc'd  my  Delia  from  my  arms, 
Think  not  your  conquest  to  maintain 
By  rigor  or  unjust  disdain. 
In  vain,  fair  nymph,  in  vain  you  strive, 
For  Love  doth  seldom  Hope  survive. 
My  heart  may  languish  for  a  time, 
As  all  beauties  in  their  prime 
Have  justified  such  cruelty, 
By  the  same  fate  that  conquered  me. 
When  age  shall  come,  at  whose  command 
Those  troops  of  beauty  must  disband — 
A  rival's  strength  once  took  away, 
What  slave's  so  dull  as  to  obey  ? 
But  if  you'll  learn  a  noble  way 
To  keep  his  empire  from  decay, 
And  there  forever  fix  your  throne, 
Be  kind,  but  kind  to  me  alone." 

Like  his  father,  who  ruined  himself  by  building,  Villiers  had 
a  monomania  for  bricks  and  mortar,  yet  he  found  time  to  write 
"  The  Rehearsal,"  a  play  on  which  Mr.  Reed  in  his  "  Dramatic 
Biography"  makes  the  following  observation :  "  It  is  so  per- 
fect a  masterpiece  in  its  way,  and  so  truly  original,  that,  not- 
withstanding its  prodigious  success,  even  the  task  of  imitation, 
which  most  kinds  of  excellence  have  invited  inferior  geniuses 
to  undertake,  has  appeared  as  too  arduous  to  be  attempted 
with  regard  to  this,  which  through  a  whole  century  stands 
alone,  notwithstanding  that  the  very  plays  it  was  written  ex- 
pressly to  ridicule  are  forgotten,  and  the  taste  it  was  meant  to 
expose  totally  exploded." 

The  reverses  of  fortune  which  brought  George  Villiers  to 
abject  misery  were  therefore,  in  a  very  great  measure,  due  to 
his  own  misconduct,  his  depravity,  his  waste  of  life,  his  per- 
version of  noble  mental  powers :  yet  in  many  respects  he  was 
in  advance  of  his  age.  He  advocated,  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
toleration  to  Dissenters.  He  wrote  a  "  Short  Discourse  on  the 
Reasonableness  of  Men's  having  a  Religion,  or  Worship  of 
God ;"  yet,  such  was  his  inconsistency,  that,  in  spite  of  these 
works,  and  of  one  styled  a  "  Demonstration  of  the  Deity," 
written  a  short  time  before  his  death,  he  assisted  Lord  Roch- 
ester in  his  atheistic  poem  upon  "  Nothing." 

Butler,  the  author  of  Hudibras,  too  truly  said  of  Villiers 
"  that  he  had  studied  the  whole  body  of  vice  y"  a  most  fearful 
censure — a  most  significant  description  of  a  bad  man.  "  His 
parts,"  he  adds,  "  are  disproportionate  to  the  whole,  and  like 
p,  monster,  he  has  more  of  some,  and  less  of  others,  than  he 


3V 

should  have.  He  has  pulled  down  all  that  nature  raised  in 
him,  and  built  himself  up  again  after  a  model  of  his  own.  He 
has  dammed  up  all  those  lights  that  nature  made  into  the  no- 
blest prospects  of  the  world,  and  opened  other  little  blind 
loopholes  backward,  by  turning  day  into  night,  and  night  into 
day." 

The  satiety  and  consequent  misery  produced  by  this  terrible 
life  are  ably  "described  by  Butler.  And  it  was  perhaps  partly 
this  wearied,  worn-out  spirit  that  caused  Villiers  to  rush  madly 
into  politics  for  excitement.  In  1666  he  asked  for  the  office 
of  Lord  President  of  the  North  ;  it  was  refused  :  he  became 
disaffected,  raised  mutinies,  and,  at  last,  excited  the  indigna- 
tion of  his  too-indulgent  sovereign.  Charles  dismissed  him 
from  his  office,  after  keeping  him  for  some  time  in  confine- 
ment. After  this  epoch  little  is  heard  of  Buckingham  but 
what  is  disgraceful.  He  was  again  restored  to  Whitehall, 
and,  according  to  Pepys,  even  closeted  with  Charles,  while  the 
Duke  of  York  was  excluded.  A  certain  acquaintance  of  the 
duke's  remonstrated  with  him  upon  the  course  which  Charles 
now  took  in  Parliament.  "  How  often  have  you  said  to  me," 
this  person  remarked,  "  that  the  king  was  a  weak  man,  unable 
to  govern,  but  to  be  governed,  and  that  you  could  command 
him  as  you  liked  ?  Why  do  you  suffer  him  to  do  these  things  ?" 

"  Why,"  answered  the  duke,  "  I  do  suffer  him  to  do  these 
things,  that  I  may  hereafter  the  better  command  him."  A 
reply  which  betrays  the  most  depraved  principle  of  action, 
whether  toward  a  sovereign  or  a  friend,  that  can  be  express- 
ed. His  influence  was  for  some  time  supreme,  yet  he  became 
the  leader  of  the  opposition,  and  invited  to  his  table  the  dis- 
contented peers,  to  whom  he  satirized  the  court,  and  condemn- 
ed the  king's  want  of  attention  to  business.  While  the  thea- 
tre was  ringing  with  laughter  at  the  inimitable  character"  of 
Bayes  in  the  "  Rehearsal,"  the  House  of  Lords  was  listening 
with  profound  attention  to  the  eloquence  that  entranced  their 
faculties,  making  wrong  seem  right,  for  Buckingham  was  ever 
heard  with  attention. 

Taking  into  account  his  mode  of  existence,  "  which,"  says 
Clarendon,  "  was  a  life  by  night  more  than  by  day,  in  all  the 
liberties  that  nature  could  desire  and  wit  invent,"  it  was  as- 
tonishing how  extensive  an  influence  he  had  in  both  Houses 
of  Parliament.  His  rank  and  condescension,  the  pleasantness 
of  his  humors  and  conversation,  and  the  extravagance  and 
keenness  of  his  wit,  unrestrained  by  modesty  or  religion, 
caused  persons  of  all  opinions  and  dispositions  to  be  fond  of 
his  company,  and  to  imagine  that  these  levities  and  vanities 
would  wear  off  with  age,  and  that  there  would  be  enough  of 


38  A   SCENE   IN   THE   LORDS. 

good  left  to  make  him  useful  to  his  country,  for  which  he  pre- 
tended a  wonderful  affection. 

But  this  brilliant  career  was  soon  checked.  The  varnish 
over  the  hollow  character  of  this  extraordinary  man  was  event- 
ually rubbed  off.  We  find  the  first  hint  of  that  famous  coali- 
tion styled  the  Cabal,  in  Pepys's  Diary,  and  henceforth  the 
duke  must  be  regarded  as  a  ruined  man. 

"He"  (Sir  H.  Cholmly)  "tells  me  that  the  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham his  crimes,  as  far  as  he  knows,  are  his  being  of  a  ca- 
bal with  some  discontented  persons  of  the  late  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  opposing  the  desires  of  the  king  in  all  his  matters  in 
that  House;  and  endeavoring  to  become  popular,  and  advis- 
ing how  the  Commons'  House  should  proceed,  and  how  he 
would  order  the  House  of  Lords.  And  he  hath  been  endeavor- 
ing to  have  the  king's  nativity  calculated ;  which  was  done, 
and  the  fellow  now  in  the  Tower  about  it.  ...  This  silly  lord 
hath  provoked,  by  his  ill  carriage,  the  Duke  of  York,  my  Lord 
Chancellor,  and  all  the  great  persons,  and  therefore  most  like- 
ly will  die." 

One  day,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  during  a  conference  be- 
tween the  two  Houses,  Buckingham  leaned  rudely  over  the 
shoulder  of  Henry  Pierrepont,  Marquis  of  Dorchester.  Lord 
Dorchester  merely  removed  his  elbow.  Then  the  duke  asked 
him  if  he  was  uneasy.  "  Yes,"  the  marquis  replied,  adding, 
"the  duke  dared  not  do  this  if  he  were  any  where  else." 
Buckingham  retorted,  "  Yes,  he  would ;  and  he  was  a  better 
man  than  my  lord  marquis ;"  on  which  Dorchester  told  him 
that  he  lied.  On  this  Buckingham  struck  off  Dorchester's  hat, 
seized  him  by  the  periwig,  pulled  it  aside,  and  held  him.  The 
Lord  Chamberlain  and  others  interposed,  and  sent  them  both 
to  the  Tower.  Nevertheless,  not  a  month  afterward,  Pepys 
speaks  of  seeing  the  duke's  play  of  "The  Chances"  acted  at 
Whitehall.  "  A  good  play,"  he  condescends  to  say,  "  I  find  it, 
and  the  actors  most  good  in  it ;  and  pretty  to  hear  Knipp  sing 
in  the  play  very  properly  4  All  night  I  weepe,'  and  sung  it  ad- 
mirably. The  whole  play  pleases  me  well :  and  most  of  all,  the 
sight  of  many  fine  ladies,  among  others,  my  Lady  Castle- 
maine  and  Mrs.  Middleton." 

The  whole  management  of  public  affairs  was,  at  this  period, 
intrusted  to  five  persons,  and  hence  the  famous  combination, 
the  united  letters  of  which  formed  the  word  "  Cabal :" — Clif- 
ford, Arlington,  Buckingham,  Ashley,  and  Lauderdale.  Their 
reprehensible  schemes,  their  desperate  characters,  rendered 
them  the  opprobrium  of  their  age,  and  the  objects  of  censure 
to  all  posterity.  While  matters  were  in  this  state  a  daring 
outrage,  which  spoke  fearfully  of  the  lawless  state  of  the  times, 


THE  DUKE  OF  ORMOND  IN  DANGER.  39 

was  ascribed,  though  wrongly,  to  Buckingham.  The  Duke  of 
Ormond,  the  object  of  his  inveterate  hatred,  was  at  that  time 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland.  Colonel  Blood — a  disaffected  dis- 
banded officer  of  the  Commonwealth,  who  had  been  attainted 
for  a  conspiracy  in  Ireland,  but  had  escaped  punishment — 
came  to  England,  and  acted  as  a  spy  for  the  Cabal,  who  did 
not  hesitate  to  countenance  this  daring  scoundrel. 

His  first  exploit  was  to  attack  the  Duke  of  Ormond's  coach 
one  night  in  St.  James's  Street :  to  secure  his  person,  bind  him, 
put  him  on  horseback  after  one  of  his  accomplices,  and  carry 
him  to  Tyburn,  where  he  meant  to  hang  his  grace.  On  their 
way,  however,  Ormond,  by  a  violent  effort,  threw  himself  on 
the  ground ;  a  scuffle  ensued :  the  duke's  servants  came  up, 
and  after  receiving  the  fire  of  Blood's  pistols,  the  duke  escaped. 
Lord  Ossory,  the  Duke  of  Ormond's  son,  on  going  afterward 
to  court,  met  Buckingham,  and  addressed  him  in  these  words : 

"  My  lord,  I  know  well  that  you  are  at  the  bottom  of  this 
late  attempt  on  my  father ;  but  I  give  you  warning,  if  he  by 
any  means  comes  to  a  violent  end,  I  shall  not  be  at  a  loss  to 
know  the  author.  I  shall  consider  you  as  an  assassin,  and  shall 
treat  you  as  such  ;  and  wherever  I  meet  you  I  shall  pistol  you, 
though  you  stood  behind  the  king's  chair ;  and  I  tell  it  you  in 
his  majesty's  presence,  that  you  may  be  sure  I  shall  not  fail  of 
performance." 

Blood's  next  feat  was  to  carry  off  from  the  Tower  the  crown 
jewels.  He  was  overtaken  and  arrested  ;  and  was  then  asked 
to  name  his  accomplices.  "  No,"  he  replied,  "  the  fear  of  dan- 
ger shall  never  tempt  me  to  deny  guilt  or  to  betray  a  friend." 
Charles  II.,  with  undignified  curiosity,  wished  to  see  the  cul- 
prit. On  inquiring  of  Blood  how  he  dared  to  make  so  bold 
an  attempt  on  the  crown,  the  bravo  answered,  "  My  father  lost 
a  good  estate  fighting  for  the  crown,  and  I  considered  it  no  harm 
to  recover  it  by  the  crown."  He  then  told  his  majesty  how 
he  had  resolved  to  assassinate  him ;  how  he  had  stood  among 
the  reeds  in  Battersea-fields  with  this  design ;  how  then  a  sud- 
den awe  had  come  over  him :  and  Charles  was  weak  enough 
to  admire  Blood's  fearless  bearing,  and  to  pardon  his  attempt. 
Well  might  the  Earl  of  Rochester  write  of  Charles — 

"Here  lies  my  sovereign  lord  the  king, 

Whose  word  no  man  relies  on ; 
Who  never  said  a  foolish  thing, 
And  never  did  a  wise  one." 

Notwithstanding  Blood's  outrages — the  slightest  penalty  for 
which  in  our  days  would  have  been  penal  servitude  for  life — 
Evelyn  met  him,  not  long  afterward,  at  Lord  Clifford's,  at 
dinner,  when  De  Grammont  and  other  French  noblemen  were 


40  WALLINGFOKD   HOUSE   AND    HAM    HOUSE. 

entertained.  "  The  man,"  says  Evelyn,  "  had  not  only  a  dar- 
ing, but  a  villainous  unmerciful  look,  a  false  countenance ;  but 
very  well-spoken,  and  dangerously  insinuating." 

Early  in  1662,  the  Duke  of  Buckingham  had  been  engaged 
in  practices  against  the  court :  he  had  disguised  deep  designs 
by  affecting  the  mere  man  of  pleasure.  Never  was  there  such 
splendor  as  at  Wallingford  House — such  wit  and  gallantry ; 
such  perfect  good-breeding ;  such  apparently  open-handed 
hospitality.  At  those  splendid  banquets,  John  Wilmot,  Earl 
of  Rochester,  "  a  man  whom  the  muses  were  fond  to  inspire, 
but  ashamed  to  avow,"  showed  his  "  beautiful  face,"  as  it  was 
called ;  and  chimed  in  with  that  wit  for  which  the  age  was  fa- 
mous. The  frequenters  at  Wallingford  House  gloried  in  their 
indelicacy.  "  One  is  amazed,"  Horace  Walpole  observes,  "  at 
hearing  the  age  of  Charles  II.  called  polite."  The  Puritans 
have  affected  to  call  every  thing  by  a  Scripture  name ;  the  new- 
comers affected  to  call  every  thing  by  its  right  name ; 
"As  if  preposterously  they  would  confess 
A  forced  hypocrisy  in  wickedness." 

Walpole  compares  the  age  of  Charles  II.  to  that  of  Aristoph- 
anes—  "which  called  its  own  grossness  polite."  How  bitter- 
ly he  decries  the  stale  poems  of  the  time  as  "  a  heap  of  sense- 
less ribaldry ;"  how  truly  he  shows  that  licentiousness  weakens 
as  well  as  depraves  the  judgment.  "  When  Satyrs  are  brought 
to  court,"  he  observes,  "  no  wonder  the  Graces  would  not  trust 
themselves  there." 

The  Cabal  is  said,  however,  to  have  been  concocted,  not  at 
Wallingford  House,  but  at  Ham  House,  near  Kingston-on- 
Thames. 

In  this  stately  old  manor-house,  the  abode  of  the  Tollemache 
family,  the  memory  of  Charles  II.  and  of  his  court  seems  to 
linger  still.  Ham  House  was  intended  for  the  residence  of 
Henry,  Prince  of  Wales,  and  was  built  in  1610.  It  stands  near 
the  river  Thames  ;  and  is  flanked  by  noble  avenues  of  elm  and 
of  chestnut  trees,  down  which  one  may  almost,  as  it  were,  hear 
the  king's  talk  with  his  courtiers ;  see  Arlington  approach  with 
the  well-known  patch  across  his  nose ;  or  spy  out  the  lovely, 
childish  Miss  Stuart  and  her  future  husband,  the  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond, slipping  behind  into  the  garden,  lest  the  jealous,  morti- 
fied king  should  catch  a  sight  of  the  "  conscious  lovers." 

This  stately  structure  was  given  by  Charles  II.,  in  1672,  to 
the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Lauderdale :  she,  the  supposed  mis- 
tress of  Cromwell;  he,  the  cruel,  hateful  Lauderrlnle  of  the  Ca- 
bal. This  detestable  couple,  however,  furnished  with  massive 
grandeur  the  apartments  of  Ham  House.  They  had  the  ceil- 
ings painted  by  Verrio ;  the  furniture  was  rich,  and  even  the 


"MADAME  ELLEN."  41 

bellows  and  brushes  in  some  of  the  rooms  are  of  silver  filigree. 
One  room  is  furnished  with  yellow  damask,  still  rich,  though 
faded ;  the  very  seats  on  which  Charles,  looking  around  him, 
saw  Clifford,  Arlington,  Buckingham,  Ashley  (the  infamous 
Shaftesbury),  and  Lauderdale — and  knew  not,  good  easy  man, 
that  he  was  looking  on  a  band  of  traitors — are  still  there.  Nay, 
he  even  sat  to  Sir  Peter  Lely  for  a  portrait  for  this  very  place 
— in  which  schemes  for  the  ruin  of  the  kingdom  were  concoct- 
ed. All,  probably,  was  smooth  and  pleasing  to  the  monarch  as 
he  ranged  down  the  fine  gallery,  ninety-two  feet  long ;  or  sat 
at  dinner  amid  his  foes  in  that  hall,  surrounded  with  an  open 
gallery;  or  disported  himself  on  the  river's  green  brink.  Nay, 
one  may  even  fancy  Nell  Gwynn  taking  a  day's  pleasure  in  this 
then  lone  and  ever  sweet  locality.  We  hear  her  swearing,  as 
she  was  wont  to  do,  perchance  at  the  dim  looking-glasses,  her 
own  house  in  Pall  Mall,  given  her  by  the  king,  having  been 
filled  up  for  the  comedian,  entirely,  ceiling  and  all,  with  look- 
ing-glass. How  bold  and  pretty  she  looked  in  her  undress, 
even  Pepys — no  very  sound  moralist,  though  a  vast  hypocrite 
— tells  us:  Nelly,  "all  unready"  was  "very  pretty,  prettier  far 
than  he  thought."  But  to  see  how  she  was  "painted,"  would, 
he  thought,  "  make  a  man  mad." 

"  Madame  Ellen,"  as  after  her  elevation,  as  it  was  termed, 
she  was  called,  might,  since  she  held  long  a  great  sway  over 
Charles's  fancy,  be  suffered  to  scamper  about  Ham  House — 
where  her  merry  laugh  perhaps  scandalized  the  now  saintly 
Duchess  of  Lauderdale,  just  to  impose  on  the  world  ;  for  Nell 
was  regarded  as  the  Protestant  champion  of  the  court,  in  op- 
position to  her  French  rival,  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth. 

Let  us  suppose  that  she  has  been  at  Ham  House,  and  is  gone 
off  to  Pall  Mall  again,  where  she  can  see  her  painted  face  in  ev- 
ery turn.  The  king  has  departed,  and  Killigrew,  who,  at  all 
events,  is  loyal,  and  the  true-hearted  Duke  of  Richmond,  all  are 
away  to  London.  In  yon  sanctimonious-looking  closet,  next  to 
the  duchess's  bedchamber,  with  her  psalter  and  her  prayer-book 
on  her  desk,  which  is  fixed  to  her  great  chair,  and  that  very 
cane  which  still  hangs  there  serving  as  her  support  from  that 
closet,  murmur  and  wrangle  the  component  parts  of  that  which 
was  never  mentioned  without  fear — the  Cabal.  They  dare  not 
trust  themselves  in  the  gallery;  there  is  tapestry  there,  and  we 
all  know  what  coverts  there  are  for  eaves-droppers  and  spiders 
in  tapestried  walls ;  then  the  great  cardinal  spiders  do  so  click 
there,  are  so  like  the  death-watch,  that  Villiers,  who  is  invet- 
erately  superstitious,  will  not  abide  there.  The  hall,  with  its 
inclosing  galleries,  and  the  buttery  near,  are  manifestly  unsafe. 
So  they  herd,  nay,  crouch,  mutter,  and  concoct  that  fearful 


42  VILLIERS   AGAIN   IN  THE  TOWER. 

treachery  which,  as  far  as  their  country  is  concerned,  has  been 
a  thing  apart  in  our  annals.  Englishmen  are  turbulent,  ambi- 
tious, unscrupulous ;  but  the  craft  of  Maitland,  Duke  of  Lau- 
derdale — the  subtlety  of  Ashley,  seem  hardly  conceivable  ei- 
ther in  a  Scot  or  a  Southern. 

These  meetings  had  their  natural  consequence.  One  leaves 
Lauderdale,  Arlington,  Ashley,  and  Clifford,  to  their  fate.  But 
the  career  of  Villiers  inspires  more  interest.  He  seemed  born 
for  better  things.  Like  many  men  of  genius,  he  was  so  cred- 
ulous that  the  faith  he  pinned  on  one  Hey  don,  an  astrologer, 
at  this  time,  perhaps  buoyed  him  up  with  false  hopes.  Be  it 
as  it  may,  his  plots  now  tended  to  open  insurrection.  In  1666 
a  proclamation  had  been  issued  for  his  apprehension — he  hav- 
ing then  absconded.  On  this  occasion  he  was  saved  by  the  act 
of  one  whom  he  had  injured  grossly — his  wife.  She  managed 
to  outride  the  sergeant-at-arms,  and  to  warn  him  of  his  danger. 
She  had  borne  his  infidelities,  after  the  fashion  of  the  day,  as 
a  matter  of  course :  jealousy  was  then  an  impertinence — con- 
stancy, a  chimera;  and  her  husband,  whatever  his  conduct,  had 
ever  treated  her  with  kindness  of  manner :  he  had  that  charm, 
that  attribute  of  his  family,  in  perfection,  and  it  had  fascinated 
Mary  Fairfax. 

He  fled,  and  played  for  a  year  successfully  the  pranks  of  his 
youth.  At  last,  worn  out,  he  talked  of  giving  himself  up  to 
justice.  "Mr.  Fenn,  at  the  table,  says  that  he  hath  been 
taken  by  the  watch  two  or  three  times  of  late,  at  unseasonable 
hours,  but  so  disguised  they  did  not  know  him ;  and  when  I 
come  home,  by  and  by,  Mr.  Lowther  tells  me  that  the  Duke 
of  Buckingham  do  dine  publickly  this  day  at  Wadlow's,  at  the 
Sun  Tavern ;  and  is  mighty  merry,  and  sent  word  to  the  Lieu- 
tenant of  the  Tower,  that  he  would  come  to  him  as  soon  as  he 
had  dined." 

While  in  the  Tower — to  which  he  was  again  committed — 
Buckingham's  pardon  was  solicited  by  Lady  Castlemaine ;  on 
which  account  the  king  was  very  angry  with  her ;  called  her 
a  meddling  "jade ;"  she  calling  him  "  fool,"  and  saying  if  he 
was  not  a  fool  he  never  would  suffer  his  best  subjects  to  be 
imprisoned — referring  to  Buckingham.  And  not  only  did  she 
ask  his  liberty,  but  the  restitution  of  his  places.  No  wonder 
there  was  discontent  when  such  things  were  done,  and  public 
affairs  were  in  such  a  state.  We  must  again  quote  the  graph- 
ic, terse  language  of  Pepys : — "  It  was  computed  that  the  Par- 
liament had  given  the  king  for  this  war  only,  besides  all  prizes, 
and  besides  the  £200,000  which  he  was  to  spend  of  his  own  rev- 
enue, to  guard  the  sea,  above  £5-,000,000,  and  odd  £100,000 ; 
which  is  a  most  prodigious  sum.  Sir  H.  Cholmly,  as  a  true 


A   CHANGE.  43 

English  gentleman,  do  decry  the  king's  expenses  of  his  privy 
purse,  which  in  King  James's  time  did  not  rise  to  above  £5000 
a  year,  and  in  King  Charles's  to  £10,000,  do  now  cost  us  above 
£100,000,  besides  the  great  charge  of  the  monarchy,  as  the 
Duke  of  York  has  £100,000  of  it,  and  other  limbs  of  the  royal 
family." 

In  consequence  of  Lady  Castlemaine's  intervention,  Villiers 
was  restored  to  liberty — a  strange  instance,  as  Pepys  remarks, 
of  the  "  fool's  play"  of  the  age.  Buckingham  was  now  as 
presuming  as  ever:  he  had  a  theatre -of  his  own,  and  he  soon 
showed  his  usual  arrogance  by  beating  Henry  Killigrew  on 
the  stage,  and  taking  away  his  coat  and  sword ;  all  very  "  in- 
nocently" done,  according  to  Pepys.  In  July  he  appeared  in 
his  place  in  the  House  of  Lords,  as  "  brisk  as  ever,"  and  sat 
in  his  robes,  "  which,"  says  Pepys,  "is  a  monstrous  thing  that 
a  man  should  be  proclaimed  against,  and  put  in  the  Tower, 
and  released  without  any  trial,' and  yet  not  restored  to  his 
places." 

We  next  "find  the  duke  intrusted  with  a  mission  to  France, 
in  concert  with  Lords  Halifax  and  Arlington.  In  the  year 
1680,  he  was  threatened  with  an  impeachment,  in  which,  with 
his  usual  skill,  he  managed  to  exculpate  himself  by  blaming 
Lord  Arlington.  The  House  of  Commons  passed  a  vote  for 
his  removal;  and  he  entered  the  ranks  of  the  opposition. 

But  this  career  of  public  meanness  and  private  profligacy 
was  drawing  to  a  close.  Alcibiades  no  longer — his  frame 
wasted  by  vice — his  spirits  broken  by  pecuniary  difficulties — 
Buckingham's  importance  visibly  sank  away.  "  He  remained, 
at  last,"  to  borrow  the  words  of  Hume, "  as  incapable  of  do- 
ing hurt  as  he  had  ever  been  little  desirous  of  doing  good  to 
mankind."  His  fortune  had  now  dwindled  down  to  £300  a 
year  in  land ;  he  sold  Wallingford  House,  and  removed  into 
the  City. 

And  now  the  fruits  of  his  adversity,  not,  we  hope  too  late, 
began  to  appear.  Like  Lord  Rochester,  who  had  ordered  all 
his  immoral  works  to  be  burnt,  Buckingham  now  wished  to 
retrieve  the  past.  In  1685  he  wrote  the  religious  works  which 
form  so  striking  a  contrast  with  his  other  productions. 

That  he  had  been  up  to  the  very  time  of  his  ruin  perfectly 
impervious  to  remorse,  dead  also  to  shame,  is  amply  mani- 
fested by  his  conduct  soon  after  his  duel  with  the  Earl  of 
Shrewsbury. 

Sir  George  Etherege  had  brought  out  a  new  play  at  the 
Duke  of  York's  Theatre.  It  was  called,  "  She  Would  if  she 
Could."  Plays  in  those  days  began  at  what  we  now  consider 
our  luncheon  hour.  Though  Pepys  arrived  at  the  theatre  at 


44 

two  o'clock — his  wife  having  gone  before — about  a  thousand 
people  had  been  put  back  from  the  pit.  At  last,  seeing  his 
wife  in  the  eighteen-penny-box,  he  "  made  shift"  to  get  there, 
and  there  saw,  "  but  lord !"  (his  own  words  are  inimitable) 
"  how  dull,  and  how  silly  the  play,  there  being  nothing  in  the 
world  good  in  it,  and  few  people  pleased  in  it.  The  king  was 
there ;  but  I  sat  mightily  behind  and  could  see  but  little,  and 
hear  not  at  all.  The  play  being  done,  I  into  the  pit  to  look  for 
my  wife,  it  being  dark  and  raining,  but  could  not  find  her ; 
and  so  staid  going  between  the  two  doors  and  through  the  pit 
an  hour  and  half,  I  think,  after  the  play  was  done ;  the  people 
staying  there  till  the  rain  was  over,  and  to  talk  to  one  anoth- 
er. And  among  the  rest,  here  was  the  Duke  of  Buckingham 
to-day  openly  in  the  pit ;  and  there  I  found  him  with  my  Lord 
Buckhurst,  and  Sedley,  and  Etheridge  the  poet,  the  last  of 
whom  I  did  hear  mightily  find  fault  with  the  actors,  that  they 
were  out  of  humor,  and  had  not  their  parts  perfect,  and  that 
Harris  did  do  nothing,  nor  could  so  much  as  sing  a  ketch  in 
it;  and  so  was  mightily  concerned,  while  all  the  rest  did, 
through  the  whole  pit,  blame  the  play  as  a  silly,  dull  thing, 
though  there  was  something  very  roguish  and  witty ;  but  the 
design  of  the  play,  and  end,  mighty  insipid." 

Buckingham  had  held  out  to  his  Puritan  friends  the  hope  of 
his  conversion  for  some  years;  and  when  they  attempted  to 
convert  him,  he  had  appointed  a  time  for  them  to  finish  their 
work.  They  kept  their  promise,  and  found  him  in  the  most 
profligate  society.  It  was  indeed  impossible  to  know  in  what 
directions  his  fancies  might  take  him,  when  we  find  him  be- 
lieving in  the  predictions  of  a  poor  fellow,  in  a  wretched  lodg- 
ing, near  Tower  Hill,  who,  having  cast  his  nativity,  assured 
the  duke  he  would  be  king. 

He  had  continued  for  years  to  live  with  the  Countess  of 
Shrewsbury,  and  two  months  after  her  husband's  death,  had 
taken  her  to  his  home.  Then,  at  last,  the  Duchess  of  Buck- 
ingham indignantly  observed,  that  she  and  the  countess  could 
not  possibly  live  together.  "  So  I  thought,  madam,"  was  the 
reply.  "  I  have  therefore  ordered  your  coach  to  take  you  to 
your  father's."  It  has  been  asserted  that  Dr.  Sprat,  the  duke's 
chaplain,  actually  married  him  to  Lady  Shrewsbury,  and  that 
his  legal  wife  thenceforth  was  styled  "  The  Duchess-dowager." 

He  retreated  with  his  mistress  to  Claverdon,  near  Windsor, 
situated  on  the  summit  of  a  hill  which  is  washed  by  the  Thames. 
It  is  a  noble  building,  with  a  great  terrace  in  front,  under  which 
are  twenty-six  niches,  in  which  Buckingham  had  intended  to 
place  twenty-six  statues  as  large  as  life ;  and  in  the  middle  is 
an  alcove,  with  stairs.  Here  he  lived  with  the  infamous  count- 


BUCKINGHAM   AND  THE   PKINCESS    OF    ORANGE.  45 

ess,  by  whom  he  had  a  son,  whom  he  styled  Earl  of  Coventry 
(his  second  title),  and  who  died  an  infant. 

One  lingers  still  over  the  social  career  of  one  whom  Louis 
XIV.  called  "  the  only  English  gentleman  he  had  ever  seen." 
A  capital  retort  was  made  to  Buckingham  by  the  Princess  of 
Orange,  during  an  interview,  when  he  stopped  at  the  Hague, 
between  her  and  the  Duke.  He  was  trying  diplomatically  to 
convince  her  of  the  affection  of  England  for  the  States.  "  We 
do  not,"  he  said,  "  use  Holland  like  a  mistress,  we  love  her  as 
a  wife."  "  Vraimentje  crois  que  vous  nous  aimez  comme  vous 
aimez  la  vbtre"  was  the  sharp  and  clever  answer. 

On  the  death  of  Charles  II.,  in  1685,  Buckingham  retired  to 
the  small  remnant  of  his  Yorkshire  estates.  His  debts  were 
now  set  down  at  the  sum  of  £140,000.  They  were  liquidated 
by  the  sale  of  his  estates.  He  took  kindly  to  a  country  life,  to 
the  surprise  of  his  old  comrade  in  pleasure,  Etherege.  "  I 
have  heard  the  news,"  that  wit  cried,  alluding  to  this  change, 
"  with  no  less  astonishment  than  if  I  had  been  told  that  the 
Pope  had  begun  to  wear  a  periwig  and  had  turned  beau  in  the 
seventy-fourth  year  of  his  age !" 

•  Father  Petre  and  Father  Fitzgerald  were  sent  by  James  II. 
to  convert  the  duke  to  Popery.  The  following  anecdote  is 
told  of  their  conference  with  the  dying  sinner :  "  We  deny," 
said  the  Jesuit  Petre, ."  that  any  one  can  be  saved  out  of  our 
Church.  Your  grace  allows  that  our  people  may  be  saved." 
"  No,  curse  ye,"  said  the  duke,  "  I  make  no  doubt  you  will  all 
be  damned  to  a  man !"  "  Sir,"  said  the  father,  "  I  can  not 
argue  with  a  person  so  void  of  all  charity."  "  I  did  not  ex- 
pect, my  reverend  father,"  said  the  duke,  "  such  a  reproach 
from  you,  whose  whole  reasoning  was  founded  on  the  very 
same  instance  of  want  of  charity  to  yourself." 

Buckingham's  death  took  place  at  Helmsby,  in  Yorkshire, 
and  the  immediate  cause  was  an  ague  and  fever,  owing  to  hav- 
ing sat  down  on  the  wet  grass  after  fox-hunting.  Pope  has 
given  the  following  forcible,  but  inaccurate,  account  of  his  last 
hours,  and  the  place  in  which  they  were  passed : 

"In  the  worst  inn's  worst  room,  with  mat  half  hung, 

The  floors  of  plaster  and  the  walls  of  dung, 

On  once  a  flock-bed,  but  repaired  with  straw, 

With  tape-tied  curtains  never  meant  to  draw ; 

The  George  and  Garter  dangling  from  that  bed, 

Where  tawdry  yellow  strove  with  dirty  red, 

Great  Villiers  lies  :  alas !  how  changed  from  him, 

That  life  of  pleasure  and  that  soul  of  whim ! 

Gallant  and  gay,  in  Claverdon's  proud  alcove, 

The  bower  of  wanton  Shrewsbury  and  love ; 

Or,  just  as  gay,  at  council  in  a  ring 

Of  inimic'd  statesmen  and  their  merry  King. 


46 

No  wit  to  flatter  left  of  all  his  store, 
No  fool  to  laiigh  at,  which  he  valued  more 
Then  victor  of  his  health,  of  fortune,  friends, 
And  fame,  this  lord  of  useless  thousands  ends." 

Far  from  expiring  in  the  "  worst  inn's  worst  room,"  the  duke 
breathed  his  last  in  Kirby  Moorside,  in  a  house  which  had 
once  been  the  best  in  the  place.  Brian  Fairfax,  who  loved 
this  brilliant  reprobate,  has  left  the  only  authentic  account  on 
record  of  his  last  hours. 

The  night  previous  to  the  duke's  death,  Fairfax  had  re- 
ceived a  message  from  him  desiring  him  to  prepare  a  bed  for 
him  in  his  house,  Bishop  Hill,  in  York.  The  next  day,  how- 
ever, Fairfax  was  sent  for  to  his  master,  whom  he  found  dy- 
ing. He  was  speechless,  but  gave  the  afflicted  servant  an 
earnest  look  of  recognition. 

The  Earl  of  Arran,  son  of  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  and  a 
gentleman  of  the  neighborhood,  stood  by  his  bedside.  He 
had  then  received  the  Holy  Communion  from  a  neighboring 
clergyman  of  the  Established  Church.  When  the  minister 
came,  it  is  said  that  he  inquired  of  the  duke  what  religion  he 
professed.  "  It  is,"  replied  the  dying  man,  "  an  insignificant 
question,  for  I  have  been  a  shame  and  a  disgrace  to  all  relig- 
ions :  if  you  can  do  me  any  good,  pray  do."  When  a  Popish 
priest  had  been  mentioned  to  him,  he  answered  vehemently, 
"No,  no!'\ 

He  was  in  a  very  low  state  when  Lord  Arran  had  found 
him.  But  though  that  nobleman  saw  death  in  his  looks,  the 
duke  said  he  "  felt  so  well  at  heart  that  he  knew  he  could  be 
in  no  danger." 

He  appeared  to  have  had  inflammation  in  the  bowels,  which 
ended  in  mortification.  He  begged  of  Lord  Arran  to  stay 
with  him.  The  house  seems  to  have  been  in  a  most  miserable 
condition,  for  in  a  letter  from  Lord  Arran  to  Dr.  Sprat,  he 
says :  "  I  confess  it  made  my  heart  bleed  to  see  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  in  so  pitiful  a  place,  and  so  bad  a  condition,  and 
what  made  it  worse,  he  was  not  at  all  sensible  of  it,  for  he 
thought  in  a  day  or  two  he  should  be  well ;  and  when  we  re- 
minded him  of  his  condition,  he  said  it  was  not  as  we  appre- 
hended. So  I  sent  for  a  worthy  gentleman,  Mr.  Gibson,  to  be 
assistant  to  me  in  this  work ;  so  we  jointly  represented  his 
condition  to  him,  who  I  saw  was  at  first  very  uneasy ;  but  I 
think  we  should  not  have  discharged  the  duties  of  honest  men 
if  we  had  suffered  him  to  go  out  of  this  world  without  desir- 
ing him  to  prepare  for  death."  The  duke  joined  heartily  in 
the  beautiful  prayers  for  the  dying,  of  our  church,  and  yet  there 
was  a  sort  of  selfishness  and  indifference  to  others  manifest 
even  at  the  last. 


DEATH    OF   VILLIERS.  47 

"  Mr.  Gibson,"  writes  Lord  Arran,  "  asked  him  if  he  had 
made  a  will,  or  if  he  would  declare  who  was  to  be  his  heir  ? 
but  to  the  first,  he  answered  he  had  made  none ;  and  to  the 
last,  whoever  was  named  he  answered,  '  No.'  First,  my  lady 
duchess  was  named,  and  then  I  think  almost  every  body  that 
had  any  relation  to  him,  but  his  answer  always  was,  '  No.'  I 
did  fully  represent  my  lady  duchess'  condition  to  him,  but 
nothing  that  was  said  to  him  could  make  him  come  to  any 
point." 

In  this  "  retired  corner,"  as  Lord  Arran  terms  it,  did  the 
former  wit  and  beau,  the  once  brave  and  fine  cavalier,  the 
reckless  plotter  in  after-life,  end  his  existence.  His  body  was 
removed  to  Helmsby  Castle,  there  to  wait  the  duchess'  pleas- 
ure, being  meantime  embalmed.  Not  one  farthing  could  his 
steward  produce  to  defray  his  burial.  His  George  and  blue 
ribbon  were  sent  to  King  James,  with  an  account  of  his  death. 

In  Kirby  Moorside,  the  following  entry  in  the  register  of 
burials  records  the  event,  which  is  so  replete  with  a  singular 
retributive  justice — so  constituted  to  impress  and  sadden  the 
mind : — 

"  George  Villus,  Lord  dooke  of  bookingham." 

He  left  scarcely  a  friend  to  mourn  his  life ;  for  to  no  man 
had  he  been  true.  He  died  on  the  16th  of  April  according  to 
some  accounts ;  according  to  others,  on  the  third  of  that  month, 
168V,  in  the  sixty-first  year  of  his  age.  His  body,  after  em- 
balming, was  deposited  in  the  family  vault  in  Henry  VII.'s 
chapel.*  He  left  no  children,  and  his  title  was  therefore  ex- 
tinct. The  Duchess  of  Buckingham,  of  whom  Brian  Fairfax 
remarks,  "  that  if  she  had  none  of  the  vanities,  she  had  none 
of  the  vices  of  the  court,"  survived  him  several  years.  She 
died  in  1705,  at  the  age  of  sixty-six,  and  was  buried  in  the 
vault  of  the  Yilliers  family,  in  the  chapel  of  Henry  VII. 

Such  was  the  extinction  of  all  the  magnificence  and  intel- 
lectual ascendency  that  at  one  time  centred  in  this  great  and 
gifted  family. 

*  Brian  Fairfax  states,  that  at  his  death  (the  Duke  of  Buckingham's)  he 
charged  his  debts  on  his  estate,  leaving  much  more  than  enough  to  cover 
them.  By  the  register  of  Westminster  Abbey,  it  appears  that  he  was  buried 
in  Henry  VII.'s  Chapel,  7th  June,  1687. 


COUNT  DE  GRAMMONT,  ST,  EVREMOND,  AO  LORD 
ROCHESTER, 

IT  has  been  observed  by  a  French  critic,  that  the  Memo-ires 
de  Grammont  afford  the  truest  specimens  of  French  character 
in  our  language.  To  this  it  may  be  added,  that  the  subject  of 
that  animated  narrative  was  most  completely  French  in  prin- 
ciple, in  intelligence,  in  wit  that  hesitated  at  nothing,  in  spir- 
its that  were  never  daunted,  and  in  that  incessant  activity 
which  is  characteristic  of  his  countrymen.  Grammont,  it  was 
said,  "  slept  neither  night  nor  day ;"  his  life  was  one  scene  of 
incessant  excitement. 

His  father,  supposed  to  have  been  the  natural  son  of  Henry 
the  Great,  of  France,  did  not  suppress  that  fact,  but  desired  to 
publish  it ;  for  the  morals  of  his  time  were  so  depraved,  that  it 
was  thought  to  be  more  honorable  to  be  the  illegitimate  son 
of  a  king  that  the  lawful  child  of  lowlier  parents.  Born  in 
the  Castle  of  Semeae,  on  the  banks  of  the  Garonne,  the  fame  of 
two  fair  ancestresses,  Corisande  and  Menadame,  had  entitled 
the  family  of  De  Grammont  to  expect  in  each  successive  mem- 
ber an  inheritance  of  beauty.  Wit,  courage,  good-nature,  a 
charming  address,  and  boundless  assurance,  were  the  heritage 
of  Philibert  de  Grammont.  Beauty  was  not  his  possession  : 
good-nature,  a  more  popular  quality,  he  had  in  abundance  : 

"  His  wit  to  scandal  never  stooping. 
His  mirth  .ne'er  to  buffoonery  drooping." 

As  Philibert  grew  up,  the  two  aristocratic  professions  of 
France  were  presented  for  his  choice :  the  army  or  the  church. 
Neither  of  these  vocations  constitutes  now  the  ambition  of  the 
high-born  in  France :  the  church,  to  a  certain  extent,  retains 
its  prestige,  but  the  army,  ever  since  officers  have  risen  from 
the  ranks,  does  not  comprise  the  same  class  of  men  as  in  En- 
gland. In  the  reign  of  Louis  XIII.,  when  De  Grammont  lived, 
it  was  otherwise.  All  political  power  was  vested  in  the  church. 
Richelieu  was,  to  all  purposes,  the  ruler  of  France,  the  dictator 
of  Europe ;  and,  with  regard  to  the  church,  great  men,  at  the 
head  of  military  affairs,  were  daily  proving  to  the  world  how 
much  intelligence  could  effect  with  a  small  numerical  power. 
Young  men  took  one  course  or  another ;  the  sway  of  the  cabi- 
net, on  the  one  hand,  tempted  them  to  the  church ;  the  bril- 

C 


50  DE  GBAMMONT'S  CHOICE. 

liant  exploits  of  Turenne,  and  of  Conde,  on  the  other,  led  them 
to  the  camp.  It  was  merely  the  difference  of  dress  between 
the  two  that  constituted  the  distinction :  the  soldier  might  be 
as  pious  as  the  priest,  the  priest  was  sure  to  be  as  worldly  as 
the  soldier  ;  the  soldier  might  have  ecclesiastical  preferment ; 
the  priest  sometimes  turned  out  to  fight. 

Philibert  de  Grammont  chose  to  be  a  soldier.  He  was 
styled  the  Chevalier  de  Grammont,  according  to  custom,  his 
father  being  still  living.  He  fought  under  Turenne,  at  the 
siege  of  Trino.  The  army  in  which  he  served  was  beleaguer- 
ing that  city  when  the  gay  youth  from  the  banks  of  the  Gar- 
onne joined  it,  to  aid  it  not  so  much  by  his  valor  as  by  the  fun, 
the  raillery,  the  off-hand  anecdote,  the  ready,  hearty  compan- 
ionship which  lightened  the  soldier's  life  in  the  trenches: 
adieu  to  impatience,  to  despair,  even  to  gravity.  The  very 
generals  could  not  maintain  their  seriousness  when  the  light- 
hearted  De  Grammont  uttered  a  repartee — 

"  Sworn  enemy  to  all  long  speeches, 
Lively  and  brilliant,  frank  and  free, 
Author  of  many  a  repartee : 
Remember,  over  all,  that  he 
Was  not  renowned  for  storming  breaches." 

Where  he  came,  all  was  sunshine,  yet  there  breathed  not  a 
colder,  graver  man  than  the  Calvinist  Turenne :  modest,  seri- 
ous, somewhat  hard,  he  gave  the  young  nobility  who  served 
under  him  no  quarter  in  their  shortcomings ;  but  a  word,  a 
look,  from  De  Grammont  could  make  him,  malgre  lui,  unbend. 
The  gay  chevalier's  white  charger's  prancing,  its  gallant  rider 
foremost  in  every  peril,  were  not  forgotten  in  after  times,  when 
De  Grammont,  in  extreme  old  age,  chatted  over  the  achieve- 
ments and  pleasures  of  his  youth. 

Among  those  who  courted  his  society  in  Turenne's  army 
was  Matta,  a  soldier  of  simple  manners,  hardy  habits,  and  hand- 
some person,  joined  to  a  candid,  honest  nature.  He  soon  per- 
suaded De  Grammont  to  share  his  quarters,  and  there  they 
gave  splendid  entertainments,  which,  Frenchman-like,  De  Gram- 
mont paid  for  out  of  the  successes  of  the  gaming-tables.  But 
chances  were  against  them ;  the  two  officers  were  at  the  mer- 
cy of  their  maitre  d^hotel,  who  asked  for  money.  One  day, 
when  De  Grammont  came  home  sooner  than  usual,  he  found 
Matta  fast  asleep.  While  De  Grammont  stood  looking  at  him, 
he  awoke,  and  burst  into  a  violent  fit  of  laughter. 

"  What  is  the  matter  ?"  cried  the  chevalier. 

"  Faith,  chevalier,"  answered  Matta,  "  I  was  dreaming  that 
we  had  sent  away  our  maitre  &  hotel,  and  were  resolved  to  live 
like  our  neighbors  for  the  rest  of  the  campaign.7' 


THE  CHURCH  OR  THE  ARMY.  51 

"  Poor  fellow !"  cried  De  Grammont.  "  So  you  are  knocked 
down  at  once :  what  would  have  become  of  you  if  you  had  been 
reduced  to  the  situation  I  was  in  at  Lyons,  four  days  before  I 
came  here  ?  Come,  I  will  tell  you  all  about  it." 

"Begin  a  little  farther  back,"  cried  Matta,  "and  tell  me  about 
the  manner  in  which  you  first  paid  your  respects  to  Cardinal 
Richelieu.  Lay  aside  your  pranks  as  a  child,  your  genealogy, 
and  all  your  ancestors  together  ;  you  can  not  know  any  thing 
about  them." 

"  Well,"  replied  De  Grammont,  "  it  was  my  father's  own 
fault  that  he  was  not  Henry  lY.'s  son :  see  what  the  Gram- 
monts  have  lost  by  this  cross-grained  fellow  !  Faith,  we  might 
have  walked  before  the  Counts  de  Vendome  at  this  very  mo- 
ment." 

Then  he  went  on  to  relate  how  he  had  been  sent  to  Pau,  to 
the  college,  to  be  brought  up  to  the  church,  with  an  old  serv- 
ant to  act  both  as  his  valet  and  his  guardian.  How  his  head 
was  too  full  of  gaming  to  learn  Latin.  How  they  gave  him 
his  rank  at  college,  as  the  youth  of  quality,  when  he  did  not 
deserve  it ;  how  he  traveled  up  to  Paris  to  his  brother  to  be 
polished,  and  went  to  court  in  the  character  of  an  abbe.  "Ah, 
Matta,  you  know  the  kind  of  dress  then  in  vogue.  No,  I 
would  not  change  my  dress,  but  I  consented  to  draw  over  it  a 
cassock.  I  had  the  finest  head  of  hair  in  the  world,  well  curl- 
ed and  powdered  above  my  cassock,  and  below  were  my  white 
buskins  and  spurs." 

Even  Richelieu,  that  hypocrite,  he  went  on  to  relate,  could 
not  help  laughing  at  the  parti-colored  costume,  sacerdotal 
above,  soldier-like  below;  but  the  cardinal  was  greatly  offend- 
ed— not  with  the  absence  of  decorum,  but  with  the  dangerous 
wit,  that  could  laugh  in  public  at  the  cowl  and  shaven  crown, 
points  which  constituted  the  greatest  portion  of  Richelieu's 
sanctity. 

De  Graramont's  brother,  however,  thus  addressed  the  chev- 
alier : — "  Well,  my  little  parson,"  said  he,  as  they  went  home, 
"  you  have  acted  your  part  to  perfection ;  but  now  you  must 
choose  your  career.  If  you  like  to  stick  to  the  church,  you 
will  possess  great  revenues,  and  nothing  to  do ;  if  you  choose 
to  go  into  the  army,  you  will  risk  your  arm  or  your  leg,  but 
in  time  you  may  be  a  major  general  with  a  wooden  leg  and 
a  glass  eye,  the  spectacle  of  an  indifferent,  ungrateful  court. 
Make  your  choice." 

The  choice,  Philibert  went  on  to  relate,  was  made.  For  the 
good  of  his  soul,  he  renounced  the  church,  but  for  his  own  ad- 
vantage, he  kept  his  abbacy.  This  was  not  difficult  in  days 
when  secular  abbes  were  common  ;  nothing  would  induce  him 


52  A   BRILLIANT   IDEA. 

to  change  his  resolution  of  being  a  soldier.  Meantime  he  was 
perfecting  his  accomplishments  as  a  fine  gentleman,  one  of  the 
requisites  for  which  was  a  knowledge  of  all  sorts  of  games. 
No  matter  that  his  mother  was  miserable  at  his  decision.  Had 
her  son  been  an  abbe,  she  thought  he  would  have  become  a 
saint :  nevertheless,  when  he  returned  home,  with  the  air  of  a 
courtier  and  a  man  of  the  world,  boy  as  he  was,  and  the  very 
impersonation  of  what  might  then  be  termed  la  jeune  France, 
she  was  so  enchanted  with  him  that  she  consented  to  his  go- 
ing to  the  wars,  attended  again  by  Brinon,  his  valet,  equerry, 
and  mentor  in  one.  Next  in  De  Grammont's  narrative  came 
his  adventure  at  Lyons,  where  he  spent  the  200  louis  his  moth- 
er had  given  Brinon  for  him,  in  play,  and  very  nearly  broke 
the  poor  old  servant's  heart;  where  he  had  duped  a  horse- 
dealer  ;  and  he  ended  by  proposing  plans,  similarly  honorable, 
to  be  adopted  for  their  present  emergencies. 

The  first  step  was  to  go  to  head-quarters,  to  dine  with  a 
certain  Count  de  Cameran,  a  Savoyard,  and  invite  him  to  sup- 
per. Here  Matta  interposed,  "Are  you  mad?"  he  exclaim- 
ed. "  Invite  him  to  supper !  we  have  neither  money  nor 
credit ;  we  are  ruined ;  and  to  save  us  you  intend  to  give  a 
supper !" 

"  Stupid  fellow !"  cried  De  Grammont.  "  Cameran  plays 
at  quinze :  so  do  I :  we  want  money.  He  has  more  than  he 
knows  what  to  do  with :  we  give  a  supper,  he  pays  for  it. 
However,"  he  added,  "  it  is  necessary  to  take  certain  precau- 
tions. You  command  the  guards :  when  night  comes  on,  or- 
der your  Sergent-de-place  to  have  fifteen  or  twenty  men  under 
arms,  and  let  them  lay  themselves  flat  on  the  ground  between 
this  and  head-quarters.  Most  likely  we  shall  win  this  stupid 
fellow's  money.  Now  the  Piedmontese  are  suspicious,  and  he 
commands  the  horse.  Now  you  know,  Matta,  you  can  not 
hold  your  tongue,  and  are  very  likely  to  let  out  some  joke  that 
will  vex  him.  Supposing  he  takes  it  into  his  head  that  he  is 
being  cheated?  He  has  always  eight  or  ten  horsemen:  we 
must  be  prepared." 

"Embrace  me!"  cried  Matta,  "embrace  me!  for  thou  art 
unparalleled.  I  thought  you  only  meant  to  prepare  a  pack  of 
cards  and  some  false  dice.  But  the  idea  of  protecting  a  man 
who  plays  at  quinze  by  a  detachment  of  foot  is  excellent; 
thine  own,  dear  chevalier !" 

Thus,  like  some  of  Dumas'  heroes,  hating  villainy  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  but  being  by  no  means  ashamed  to  acknowledge 
it,  the  Piedmontese  was  asked  to  supper.  He  came.  Never- 
theless, in  the  midst  of  the  affair,  when  De  Cameran  was  los- 
ing as  fast  as  he  could,  Matta's  conscience  touched  him :  he 


DE  GBAMMONT'S  GEKEKOSITY.  53 

awoke  from  a  deep  sleep,  heard  the  dice  shaking,  saw  the  poor 
Savoyard  losing,  and  advised  him  to  play  no  more. 

"  Don't  you  know,  count,  you  can  not  win  ?" 

"Why?"  asked  the  count. 

"  Why,  faith,  because  we  are  cheating  you,"  was  the  reply. 

The  chevalier  turned  round  impatiently,  "  Sieur  Matta,"  he 
cried,  "  do  you  suppose  it  can  be  any  amusement  to  Monsieur 
le  Oomte  to  be  plagued  with  your  ill-timed  jests  ?  For  my 
part,  I  am  so  weary  of  the  game  that  I  swear  by  Jupiter  I  can 
scarcely  play  any  more."  Nothing  is  more  distasteful  to  a 
losing  gamester  than  a  hint  of  leaving  off;  so  the  count  en- 
treated the  chevalier  to  continue,  and  assured  him  that  "  Mon- 
sieur Matta  might  say  what  he  pleased,  for  it  did  not  give  him 
the  least  uneasiness  to  continue." 

The  chevalier  allowed  the  count  to  play  upon  credit,  and 
that  act  of  courtesy  was  taken  very  kindly:  the  dupe  lost 
1500  pistoles,  which  he  paid  the  next  morning,  when  Matta 
was  sharply  reprimanded  for  his  interference. 

"  Faith,"  he  answered,  "  it  was  a  point  of  conscience  with 
me ;  besides  it  would  have  given  me  pleasure  to  have  seen  his 
horse  engaged  with  my  infantry,  if  he  had  taken  any  thing 
amiss." 

The  sum  thus  gained  set  the  spendthrifts  up ;  and  De  Gram- 
mont  satisfied  his  conscience  by  giving  it  away,  to  a  certain 
extent,  in  charity.  It  is  singular  to  perceive  in  the  history  of 
this  celebrated  man  that  moral  taint  of  character  which  the 
French  have  never  lost :  this  total  absence  of  right  reasoning 
on  all  points  of  conduct,  is  coupled  in  our  Gallic  neighbors 
with  the  greatest  natural  benevolence,  with  a  generosity  only 
kept  back  by  poverty,  with  impulsive,  impressionable  disposi- 
tions, that  require  the  guidance  of  a  sound  Protestant  faith  to 
elevate  and  correct  them. 

The  chevalier  hastened,  it  is  related,  to  find  out  distressed 
comrades,  officers  who  had  lost  their  baggage,  or  who  had 
been  ruined  by  gaming ;  or  soldiers  who  had  been  disabled  in 
the  trenches ;  and  his  manner  of  relieving  them  was'as  grace- 
ful and  as  delicate  as  the  bounty  he  distributed  was  welcome. 
He  was  the  darling  of  the  army.  The  poor  soldier  knew  him 
personally,  and  adored  him ;  the  general  was  sure  to  meet  him 
in  the  scenes  of  action,  and  to  seek  his  company  in  those  of 
security. 

And,  having  thus  retrieved  his  finances,  the  gay-hearted 
chevalier  used,  henceforth,  to  make  De  Cameran  go  halves 
with  him  in  all  games  in  which  the  odds  were  in  his  own 
favor.  Even  the  staid  Calvinist,  Turenne,  who  had  not  then 
renounced,  as  he  did  in  after  life,  the  Protestant  faith,  delight- 


54  A   HORSE   "FOR  THE   CARDS." 

ed  in  the  off-hand  merriment  of  the  chevalier.  It  was  toward 
the  end  of  the  siege  of  Trino,  that  De  Grammont  went  to  visit 
that  general  in  some  new  quarters,  where  Turenne  received 
him,  surrounded  by  fifteen  or  twenty  officers.  According  to 
the  custom  of  the  day,  cards  were  introduced,  and  the  general 
asked  the  chevalier  to  play. 

"  Sir,"  returned  the  young  soldier,  "  my  tutor  taught  me 
that  when  a  man  goes  to  see  his  friends  it  is  neither  prudent 
to  leave  his  own  money  behind  him  nor  civil  to  take  theirs." 

"  Well,"  answered  Turenne,  "  I  can  tell  you  you  will  find 
neither  much  money  nor  deep  play  among  us ;  but  that  it  can 
not  be  said  that  we  allowed  you  to  go  ofi"  without  playing, 
suppose  we  each  of  us  stake  a  horse." 

De  Grammont  agreed,  and,  lucky  as  ever,  won  from  the 
officers  some  fifteen  or  sixteen  horses,  by  way  of  a  joke  ;  but 
seeing  several  faces  pale,  he  said,  "  Gentlemen,  I  should  be 
sorry  to  see  you  go  away  from  your  general's  quarters  on  foot ; 
it  will  do  very  well  if  you  all  send  me  to-morrow  your  horses, 
except  one,  which  I  give  for  the  cards." 

The  valet-de-chambre  thought  he  was  jesting.  "  I  am  seri- 
ous," cried  the  chevalier.  "  Parole  d'honneur  I  give  a  horse 
for  the  cards ;  and  what's  more,  take  which  you  please,  only 
don't  take  mine." 

"  Faith,"  said  Turenne,  pleased  with  the  novelty  of  the  af- 
fair, "  I  don't  believe  a  horse  was  ever  before  given  for  the 
cards." 

Young  people,  and  indeed  old  people,  can  perhaps  hardly 
remember  the  time  when,  even  in  England,  money  used  to  be 
put  under  the  candlesticks  "  for  the  cards,"  as  it  was  said,  but 
in  fact  for  the  servants,  who  waited.  Winner  or  loser,  the  tax 
was  to  be  paid,  and  this  custom  of  vails  was  also  prevalent  in 
France. 

Trino  at  last  surrendered,  and  the  two  friends  rushed  from 
their  campaigning  life  to  enjoy  the  gayeties  of  Turin,  at  that 
time  the  centre  of  pleasure;  and  resolved  to  perfect  their  char- 
acters as  military  heroes — by  falling  in  love,  if  respectably, 
well ;  if  disreputably,  well  too,  perhaps  all  the  more  agreea- 
ble, and  venturesome,  as  they  thought. 

The  court  of  Turin  was  then  presided  over  by  the  Duchess 
of  Savoy,  Madame  Royale,  as  she  was  called  in  France,  the 
daughter  of  Henry  IV.  of  France,  the  sister  of  Henrietta  Ma- 
ria of  England.  She  was  a  woman  of  talent  and  spirit,  worthy 
of  her  descent,  and  had  certain  other  qualities  which  constitu- 
ted a  point  of  resemblance  between  her  and  her  father ;  she 
was,  like  him,  more  fascinating  than  respectable. 

The  customs  of  Turin  were  rather  Italian  than  French.     At 


KNIGHT-CICISBEISM.  55 

that  time  every  lady  had  her  professed  lover,  who  wore  the 
liveries  of  his  mistress,  bore  her  arms,  and  sometimes  assumed 
her  very  name.  The  office  of  the  lover  was,  never  to  quit  his 
lady  in  public,  and  never  to  approach  her  in  private :  to  be  on 
all  occasions  her  esquire.  In  the  tournament  her  chosen  knight- 
cicisbeo  came  forth  with  his  coat,  his  housings,  his  very  lance 
distinguished  with  the  ciphers  and  colors  of  her  who  had  con- 
descended to  invest  him  with  her  preference.  It  was  the  rem- 
nant of  chivalry  that  authorized  this  custom ;  but  of  chivalry 
demoralized — chivalry  denuded  of  her  purity,  her  respect,  the 
chivalry  of  corrupted  Italy,  not  of  that  which,  perhaps  falla- 
ciously, we  assign  to  the  earlier  ages. 

Grammont  and  Matta  enlisted  themselves  at  once  in  the 
service  of  two  beauties.  Grammont  chose  for  the  queen  of 
beauty,  who  was  to  "  rain  influence"  upon  him,  Mademoiselle 
de  St.  Germain,  who  was  in  the  very  bloom  of  youth.  vShe 
was  French,  and,  probably,  an  ancestress  of  that  all-accom- 
plished Comte  de  St.  Germain,  whose  exploits  so  dazzled  suc- 
cessive European  courts,  and  the  fullest  account  of  whom,  in 
all  its  brilliant  colors,  yet  tinged  with  mystery,  is  given  in  the 
Memoirs  of  Maria  Antoinette,  by  the  Marquise  d'Adhemar, 
her  lady  of  the  bedchamber. 

The  lovely  object  of  De  Grammont's  "first  love"  was  a 
radiant  brunette  belle,  who  took  no  pains  to  set  off  by  art  the 
charms  of  nature.  She  had  some  defects :  her  black  and  spark- 
ling eyes  were  small ;  her  forehead,  by  no  means  "  as  pure  as 
moonlight  sleeping  upon  snow,"  was  not  fair,  neither  were  her 
hands ;  neither  had  she  small  feet — but  her  form  generally  was 
perfect ;  her  elbows  had  a  peculiar  elegance  in  them ;  and  in 
old  times  to  hold  the  elbow  out  well,  and  yet  not  to  stick  it 
out,  was  a  point  of  early  discipline.  Then  her  glossy  black 
hair  set  off  a  superb  neck  and  shoulders ;  and,  moreover,  she 
was  gay,  full  of  mirth,  life,  complaisance,  perfect  in  all  the 
acts  of  politeness,  and  invariable  in  her  gracious  and  graceful 
bearing. 

Matta  admired  her ;  but  De  Grammont  ordered  him  to  at- 
tach himself  to  the  Marquise  de  Senantes,  a  married  beauty  of 
the  court ;  and  Matta,  in  full  faith  that  all  Grammont  said  and 
did  was  sure  to  succeed,  obeyed  his  friend.  The  chevalier  had 
fallen  in  love  with  Mademoiselle  de  St.  Germain  at  first  sight, 
and  instantly  arrayed  himself  in  her  color,  which  was  green, 
while  Matta  wore  blue,  in  compliment  to  the  marquise ;  and 
they  entered  the  next  day  upon  duty,  at  La  Yenerie,  where 
the  Duchess  of  Savoy  gave  a  grand  entertainment.  De  Gram- 
mont, with  his  native  tact  and  unscrupulous  mendacity,  played 
his  part  to  perfection ;  but  his  comrade,  Matta,  committed  a 


56         DE  GRAMMONT'S  WITTY  ATTACKS  ON  MAZARIN. 

hundred  solecisms.  The  very  second  time  he  honored  the 
marquise  with  his  attentions,  he  treated  her  as  if  she  were  his 
humble  servant :  when  he  pressed  her  hand,  it  was  a  pressure 
that  almost  made  her  scream.  When  he  ought  to  have  ridden 
by  the  side  of  her  coach,  he  set  off,  on  seeing  a  hare  start  from 
her  form  ;  then  he  talked  to  her  of  partridges  when  he  should 
have  been  laying  himself  at  her  feet.  Both  these  affairs  ended 
as  might  have  been  expected.  Mademoiselle  de  St.  Germain 
was  diverted  by  Grammont,  yet  he  could  not  touch  her  heart. 
Her  aim  was  to  marry ;  his  was  merely  to  attach  himself  to  a 
reigning  beauty.  They  parted  without  regret ;  and  he  left  the 
then  remote  court  of  Turin  for  the  gayer  scenes  of  Paris  and 
Versailles.  Here  he  became  as  celebrated  for  his  alertness  in 
play  as  for  his  readiness  in  repartee  ;  as  noted  for  his  intrigues 
as  he  afterward  was  for  his  bravery. 

Those  were  stirring  days  in  France.  Anne  of  Austria,  then 
in  her  maturity,  was  governed  by  Mazarin,  the  most  artful  of 
ministers,  an  Italian  to  the  very  heart's  core,  with  a  love  of 
amassing  wealth  ingrafted  in  his  supple  nature  that  amounted 
to  a  monomania.  The  whole  aim  of  his  life  was  gain.  Though 
gaming  was  at  its  height,  Mazarin  never  played  for  amuse- 
ment ;  he  played  to  enrich  himself;  and  when  he  played,  he 
cheated. 

The  Chevalier  de  Grammont  was  rich,  and  Mazarin  wor- 
shiped the  rich.  He  was  witty;  and  his  wit  soon  procured 
him  admission  into  the  clique  whom  the  wily  Mazarin  collected 
around  him  in  Paris.  Whatever  were  De  Grammont's  faults, 
he  soon  perceived  those  of  Mazarin ;  he  detected,  and  he  de- 
tested the  wily,  grasping,  serpent-like  attributes  of  the  Italian ; 
he  attacked  him  on  every  occasion  on  which  a  "  wit  combat" 
was  possible ;  he  gracefully  showed  Mazarin  off  in  his  true  col- 
ors. With  ease  he  annihilated  him,  metaphorically,  at  his  own 
table..  Yet  De  Grammont  had  something  to  atone  for :  he  had 
been  the  adherent  and  companion  in  arms  of  Conde ;  he  had 
followed  that  hero  to  Sens,  to  Nordlingen,  to  Fribourg,  and 
had  returned  to  his  allegiance  to  the  young  king,  Louis  XIV., 
only  because  he  wished  to  visit  the  court  at  Paris.  Mazarin's 
policy,  however,  was  that  of  pardon  and  peace — of  duplicity 
and  treachery — and  the  chevalier  seemed  to  be  forgiven  on 
his  return  to  Paris,  even  by  Anne  of  Austria.  Nevertheless, 
De  Grammont  never  lost  his  independence ;  and  he  could  boast 
in  after  life  that  he  owed  the  two  great  cardinals  who  had  gov- 
erned France  nothing  that  they  could  have  refused.  It  was 
true  that  Richelieu  had  left  him  his  abbacy ;  but  he  could  not 
refuse  it  to  one  of  De  Grammont's  rank.  From  Mazarin  he 
had  gained  nothing  except  what  he  had  won  at  play. 


ANNE   LUCIE   DE   LA   MOTHE    HOUDANCOURT.  57 

After  Mazarin's  death  the  chevalier  intended  to  secure  the 
favor  of  the  king,  Louis  XIV.,  to  whom,  as  he  rejoiced  to  find, 
court  alone  was  now  to  be  paid.  He  had  now  somewhat  rec- 
tified his  distinctions  between  right  and  wrong,  and  was  re- 
solved to  have  no  regard  for  favor  unless  supported  by  merit ; 
he  determined  to  make  himself  beloved  by  the  courtiers  of 
Louis,  and  feared  by  the  ministers ;  to  dare  to  undertake  any 
thing  to  do  good,  and  to  engage  in  nothing  at  the  expense  of 
innocence.  He  still  continued  to  be  eminently  successful  in 
play,  of  which  he  did  not  perceive  the  evil,  nor  allow  the 
wickedness;  but  he  was  unfortunate  in  love,  in  which  he  was 
equally  unscrupulous  and  more  rash  than  at  the  gaming-table. 

Among  the  maids  of  honor  of  Anne  of  Austria  was  a  young 
lady  named  Anne  Lucie  de  la  Mothe  Houdancourt.  Louis, 
though  not  long  married,  showed  some  symptoms  of  admira- 
tion for  this  debutante  in  the  wicked  ways  of  the  court. 

Gay,  radiant  in  the  bloom  of  youth  and  innocence,  the  sto- 
ry of  this  young  girl  presents  an  instance  of  the  unhappiness 
which,  without  guilt,  the  sins  of  others  bring  upon  even  the 
virtuous.  The  queen-dowager,  Anne  of  Austria,  was  living  at 
St.  Germains  when  Mademoiselle  de  la  Mothe  Houdancourt 
was  received  into  her  household.  The  Duchess  de  Noailles, 
at  that  time  Grande  Maitresse,  exercised  a  vigilant  and  kind- 
ly rule  over  the  maids  of  honor ;  nevertheless,  she  could  not 
prevent  their  being  liable  to  the  attentions  of  Louis :  she  for- 
bade him  however  to  loiter,  or  indeed  even  to  be  seen  in  the 
room  appropriated  to  the  young  damsels  under  her  charge; 
and  when  attracted  by  the  beauty  of  Anne  Lucie  de  la  Mothe, 
Louis  was  obliged  to  speak  to  her  through  a  hole  behind  a 
clock  which  stood  in  a  corridor. 

Anne  Lucie,  notwithstanding  this  apparent  encouragement 
of  the  king's  addresses,  was  perfectly  indifferent  to  his  admi- 
ration. She  was  secretly  attached  to  the  Marquis  de  Riche- 
lieu, who  had,  or  pretended  to  have,  honorable  intentions  to- 
ward her.  Every  thing  was  tried,  but  tried  in  vain,  to  induce 
the  poor  girl  to  give  up  all  her  predilections  for  the  sake  of  a 
guilty  distinction — that  of  being  the  king's  mistress :  even  her 
mother  reproached  her  with  her  coldness.  "  A  family  council 
was  held,  in  hopes  of  convincing  her  of  her  willfulness,  and 
Anne  Lucie  was  bitterly  reproached  by  her  female  relatives ; 
but  her  heart  still  clung  to  the  faithless  Marquis  de  Richelieu, 
who,  however,  when  he  saw  that  a  royal  lover  was  his  rival, 
meanly  withdrew. 

Her  fall  seemed  inevitable;  but  the  firmness  of  Anne  of 
Austria  saved  her  from  her  ruin.  That  queen  insisted  on  her 
being  sent  away ;  and  she  resisted  even  the  entreaties  of  the 

C2 


58  BESET   WITH    SNARES. 

queen,  her  daughter-in-law,  and  the  wife  of  Louis  XIV. ;  who, 
for  some  reason  not  explained,  entreated  that  the  young  lady 
might  remain  at  the  court.  Anne  was  sent  away  in  a  sort  of 
disgrace  to  the  convent  of  Chaillot,  which  was  then  consider- 
ed to  be  quite  out  of  Paris,  and  sufficiently  secluded  to  pro- 
tect her  from  visitors.  According  to  another  account,  a  let- 
ter full  of  reproaches,  which  she  wrote  to  the  Marquis  de 
Richelieu,  upbraiding  him  for  his  desertion,  had  been  inter- 
cepted. 

It  was  to  this  young  lady  that  De  Grammont,  who  was 
then,  in  the  very  centre  of  the  court,  "  the  type  of  fashion 
and  the  mould  of  form,"  attached  himself  as  an  admirer 
who  could  condescend  to  honor  with  his  attentions  those 
whom  the  king  pursued.  The  once  gay  girl  was  thus  beset 
with  snares :  on  one  side  was  the  king,  whose  disgusting  pref- 
erence was  shown  when  in  her  presence  by  sighs  and  senti- 
ment ;  on  the  other,  De  Grammont,  whose  attentions  to  her 
were  importunate,  but  failed  to  convince  her  that  he  was  in 
love ;  on  the  other  was  the  time-serving,  heartless  De  Riche- 
lieu, whom  her  reason  condemned  but  her  heart  cherished. 
She  soon  showed  her  distrust  and  dislike  of  De  Grammont : 
she  treated  him  with  contempt ;  she  threatened  him  with  ex- 
posure, yet  he  would  not  desist :  then  she  complained  of  him 
to  the  king.  It  was  then  that  he  perceived  that  though  love 
could  equalize  conditions,  it  could  not  act  in  the  same  way  be- 
tween rivals.  He  was  commanded  to  leave  the  court.  Par- 
is, therefore,  Versailles,  Fontainebleau,  and  St.  Germains  were 
closed  against  this  gay  chevalier ;  and  how  could  he  live  else- 
where ?  Whither  could  he  go  ?  Strange  to  say,  he  had  a 
vast  fancy  to  behold  the  man  who,  stained  with  the  crime  of 
regicide,  and  sprung  from  the  people,  was  receiving  magnifi- 
cent embassies  from  continental  nations,  while  Charles  II.  was 
seeking  security  in  his  exile  from  the  power  of  Spain  in  the 
Low  Countries.  He  was  eager  to  see  the  Protector,  Crom- 
well. But  Cromwell,  though  in  the  height  of  his  fame  when 
beheld  by  De  Grammont — though  feared  at  home  and  abroad 
— was  little  calculated  to  win  suffrages  from  a  mere  man  of 
pleasure  like  De  Grammont.  The  court,  the  city,  the  coun- 
try, were  in  his  days  gloomy,  discontented,  joyless :  a  pro- 
scribed nobility  was  the  sure  cause  of  the  thin  though  few 
festivities  of  the  now  lugubrious  gallery  of  Whitehall.  Pu- 
ritanism drove  the  old  jovial  churchmen  into  retreat,  and  dis- 
pelled every  lingering  vestige  of  the  old  hospitality:  long 
graces  and  long  sermons,  sanctimonious  manners,  and  grim, 
sad  faces,  and  sad -colored  dresses,  were  not  much  to  De 
Grammont's  taste :  he  returned  to  France,  and  declared  that 


CHARLES    II.  59 

he  had  gained  no  advantage  from  his  travels.  Nevertheless, 
either  from  choice  or  necessity,  he  made  another  trial  of  the 
damps  and  fogs  of  England.* 

When  he  again  visited  our  country,  Charles  II.  had  been 
two  years  seated  on  the  throne  of  his  father.  Every  thing 
was  changed,  and  the  British  court  was  in  its  fullest  splen- 
dor; -while  the  rejoicings  of  the  people  of  England  at  the  Res- 
toration were  still  resounding  through  the  land. 

If  one  could  include  royal  personages  in  the  rather  gay  than 
worthy  category  of  the  "  wits  and  beaux  of  society,"  Charles 
II.  should  figure  at  their  head.  He  was  the  most  agreeable 
companion,  and  the  worst  king  imaginable.  In  the  first  place 
he  was,  as  it  were,  a  citizen  of  the  world ;  tossed  about  by  for- 
tune from  his  early  boyhood ;  a  witness  at  the  tender  age  of 
twelve  of  the  battle  of  Edge  Hill,  where  the  celebrated  Har- 
vey had  charge  of  him  and  of  his  brother.  That  inauspicious 
commencement  of  a  wandering  life  had  perhaps  been  among 
the  least  of  his  early  trials.  The  fiercest  was  his  long  resi- 
dence as  a  sort  of  royal  prisoner  in  Scotland.  A  traveled, 
humbled  man,  he  came  back  to  England  with  a  full  knowl- 
edge of  men  and  manners,  in  the  prime  of  his  life,  with  spirits 
unbroken  by  adversity,  with  a  heart  unsoured  by  that  "  stern 
nurse,"  with  a  gayety  that  was  always  kindly,  never  uncourt- 
eous,  ever  more  French  than  English ;  far  more  natural  did  he 
appear  as  the  son  of  Henrietta  Maria  than  as  the  offspring  of 
the  thoughtful  Charles. 

In  person,  too,  the  king  was  then  agreeable ;  though  rather 
what  the  French  would  call  distingue  than  dignified ;  he  was, 
however,  tall,  and  somewhat  elegant,  with  a  long  French  face, 
which  in  his  boyhood  was  plump  and  full  about  the  lower  part 
of  the  cheeks,  but  now  began  to  sink  into  that  well-known, 
lean,  dark,  flexible  countenance,  in  which  we  do  not,  howev- 
er, recognize  the  gayety  of  the  man  whose  very  name  brings 
with  it  associations  of  wit,  politeness,  good  company,  and  all 
the  attributes  of  a  first-rate  wit,  except  the  almost  inevitable 
ill-nature.  There  is  in  the  physiognomy  of  Charles  II.  that 
melancholy  which  is  often  observable  in  the  faces  of  those 
who  are  mere  men  of  pleasure. 

De  Grammont  found  himself  completely  in  his  own  sphere 
at  Whitehall,  where  the  habits  were  far  more  French  than 
English.  Along  that  stately  Mall,  overshadowed  with  um- 
brageous trees,  which  retains — and  it  is  to  be  hoped  ever  will 
retain — the  old  name  of  the  "  Birdcage  Walk,"  one  can  pic- 
ture to  one's  self  the  king  walking  so  fast  that  no  one  can 

*  M.  de  Grammont  visited  England  during  the  Protectorate.  His  second 
visit,  after  being  forbidden  the  court  by  Louis  XIV.,  was  in  1662. 


60  THE   COUKT    OP   CHARLES    II. 

keep  up  with  him;  yet  stopping  from  time  to  time  to  chat 
with  some  acquaintances.  He  is  walking  to  Duck  Island, 
which  is  full  of  his  favorite  water-fowl,  and  of  which  he  has 
given  St.  Evremond  the  government.  How  pleasant  is  his 
talk  to  those  who  attend  him  as  he  walks  along;  how  well  the 
quality  of  good-nature  is  shown  in  his  love  of  dumb  animals  ; 
how  completely  he  is  a  boy  still,  even  in  that  brown  wig  of 
many  curls,  and  with  the  George  and  Garter  on  his  breast! 
Boy,  indeed,  for  he  is  followed  by  a  litter  of  young  spaniels : 
a  little  brindled  greyhound  frisks  beside  him ;  it  is  for  that  he 
is  ridiculed  by  the  "psalm"  sung  at  the  Calves'  Head  Club : 
these  favorites  were  cherished  to  his  death. 

"His  dogs  would  sit  in  council  boards 
Like  judges  in  their  seats : 
We  question  much  which  had  most  sense, 
The  master  or  the  curs." 

Then  what  capital  stories  Charles  would  tell,  as  he  unbent 
at  night  amid  the  faithful,  though  profligate  companions  of 
his  exile !  He  told  his  anecdotes,  it  is  true,  over  and  over 
again,  yet  they  were  always  embellished  with  some  fresh 
touch — like  the  repetition  of  a  song  which  has  been  encored 
on  the  stage.  Whether  from  his  inimitable  art,  or  from  his 
royalty,  we  leave  others  to  guess,  but  his  stories  bore  repeti- 
tion again  and  again :  they  were  amusing,  and  even  novel,  to 
the  very  last. 

To  this  seducing  court  did  De  Grammont  now  come.  It 
was  a  delightful  exchange  from  the  endless  ceremonies  and 
punctilios  of  the  region  over  which  Louis  XIV.  presided. 
Wherever  Charles  was,  his  palace  appeared  to  resemble  a 
large  hospitable  house — sometimes  town,  sometimes  country 
— in  which  every  one  did  as  he  liked ;  and  where  distinctions 
of  rank  were  kept  up  as  a  matter  of  convenience,  but  were 
only  valued  on  that  score. 

Charles  had  modeled  his  court  very  much  on  the  plan  of 
that  of  Louis  XIV.,  which  he  had  admired  for  its  gayety  and 
spirit.  Corneille,  Racine,  Moliere,  Boileau,  were  encouraged 
by  le  Grand  Monarque.  Wycherley  and  Dryden  were  at- 
tracted by  Charles  to  celebrate  the  festivities,  and  to  amuse 
the  great  and  the  gay.  In  other  points  De  Grammont  found 
a  resemblance.  The  queen -consort,  Catherine  of  Braganza, 
was  as  complacent  to  her  husband's  vices  as  the  queen  of 
Louis.  These  royal  ladies  were  merely  first  sultanas,  and  had 
no  right,  it  was  thought,  to  feel  jealousy  or  to  resent  neglect. 
Each  returning  Sabbath  saw  Whitehall  lighted  up,  and  heard 
the  tabors  sound  for  a  branle  (Anglicized  "brawl").  This 
was  a  dance  which  mixed  up  every  body,  and  called  a  brawl, 


INTRODUCTION    OP    COUNTRY   DANCES.  61 

from  the  foot  being  shaken  to  a  quick  time.  Gayly  did  his 
Majesty  perform  it,  leading  to  the  hot  exercise  Anne  Hyde, 
Duchess  of  York,  stout  and  homely,  and  leaving  Lady  Castle- 
maine  to  his  son  the  Duke  of  Monmouth.  Then  Charles,  with 
ready  grace,  would  begin  the  coranto,  taking  a  single  lady  in 
this  dance  along  the  gallery.  Lords  and  ladies  one  after  an- 
other followed,  and  "  very  noble,"  writes  Pepys,  "  and  great 
pleasure  it  was  to  see."  Next  came  the  country  dances,  in- 
troduced by  Mary,  Countess  of  Buckingham,  the  grandmoth- 
er of  the  graceful  duke  who  is  moving  along  the  gallery ;  and 
she  invented  those  once  popular  dances  in  order  to  introduce, 
with  less  chance  of  failure,  her  rustic  country  cousins,  who 
could  not  easily  be  taught  to  carry  themselves  well  in  the 
brawl,  or  to  step  out  gracefully  in  the  coranto,  both  of  which 
dances  required  practice  and  time.  In  all  these  dances  the 
king  shines  the  most,  and  dances  much  better  than  his  broth- 
er the  Duke  of  York. 

In  these  gay  scenes  De  Grammont  met  with  the  most  fash- 
ionable belles  of  the  court :  fortunately  for  him  they  all  spoke 
French  tolerably;  and  he  quickly  made  himself  welcome  among 
even  the  few — and  few  indeed  there  were — who  plumed  them- 
selves upon  untainted  reputations.  Hitherto  those  French  no- 
blemen who  had  presented  themselves  in  England  had  been 
poor  and  absurd.  The  court  had  been  thronged  with  a  troop 
of  impertinent  Parisian  coxcombs,  who  had  pretended  to  de- 
spise every  thing  English,  and  who  treated  the  natives  as  if 
they  were  foreigners  in  their  own  country.  De  Grammont, 
on  the  contrary,  was  familiar  with  every  one :  he  ate,  he  drank, 
he  lived,  in  short,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  country  that 
hospitably  received  him,  and  accorded  him  the  more  respect, 
because  they  had  been  insulted  by  others. 

He  now  introduced  the  petits  soupers,  which  have  never 
been  understood  any  where  so  well  as  in  France,  and  which 
are  even  there  dying  out  to  make  way  for  the  less  social  and 
more  expensive  dinner ;  but,  perhaps,  he  would  even  here  have 
been  unsuccessful,  had  it  not  been  for  the  society  and  advice 
of  the  famous  St.  Evremond,  who  at  this  time  was  exiled  in 
France  and  took  refuge  in  England. 

This  celebrated  and  accomplished  man  had  some  points  of  re- 
semblance with  De  Grammont.  Like  him,  he  had  been  origin- 
ally intended  for  the  church ;  like  him  he  had  turned  to  the  mil- 
itary profession  ;  he  was  an  ensign  before  he  was  full  sixteen ; 
and  had  a  company  of  foot  given  him  after  serving  two  or  three 
campaigns.  Like  De  Grammont,  he  owed  the  facilities  of  his 
early  career  to  his  being  the  descendant  of  an  ancient  and  hon- 
orable family.  St.  Evremond  was  the  Seigneur  of  St.  Denis  le 
Gnnst,  in  Normandy,  where  he  was  born.* 


62  NOKMAN   PECULIARITIES. 

Both  these  sparkling  wits  of  society  had  at  one  time,  and,  in 
fact,  at  the  same  period,  served  under  the  great  Conde ;  both 
were  pre-eminent,  not  only  in  literature,  but  in  games  of  chance. 
St.  Evremond  was  famous  at  the  University  of  Caen,  in  which 
he  studied,  for  his  fencing;  and  "St.  Evremond's  pass"  was 
well  known  to  swordsmen  of  his  time  ;  both  were  gay  and  sa- 
tirical ;  neither  of  them  pretended  to  rigid  morals  ;  but  both 
wrere  accounted  men  of  honor  among  their  fellow-men  of  pleas- 
ure. They  were  graceful,  kind,  generous. 

In  person  St.  Evremond  had  the  advantage,  being  a  Norman 
— a  race  which  combines  the  handsomest  traits  of  an  English 
countenance  with  its  blond  hair,  blue  eyes,  and  fair  skin.  Nei- 
ther does  the  slight  tinge  of  the  Gallic  race  detract  from  the 
attractions  of  a  true,  well-born  Norman,  bred  up  in  that  prov- 
ince which  is  called  the  Court-end  of  France,  and  polished  in 
the  capital.  Your  Norman  is  hardy,  and  fond  of  field-sports : 
like  the  Englishman,  he  is  usually  fearless ;  generous,  but  some- 
what crafty.  You  may  know  him  by  the  fresh  color,  the  pe- 
culiar blue  eye,  long  and  large ;  by  his  joyousness  and  look  of 
health,  gathered  up  even  in  his  own  marshy  country,  for  the 
Norman  is  well  fed,  and  lives  on  rich  pasture-land,  with  cheap- 
ness and  plenty  around  him.  And  St.  Evremond  was  one  of 
the  handsomest  specimens  of  this  fine  locality  (so  mixed  up  as 
it  is  with  us) ;  and  his  blue  eyes  sparkled  with  humor ;  his 
beautifully-turned  mouth  was  all  sweetness;  and  his  noble 
forehead,  the  whiteness  of  which  was  set  off  by  thick  dark 
eyebrows,  was  expressive  of  his  great  intelligence,  until  a  wen 
grew  between  his  eyebrows,  and  so  changed  all  the  expression 
of  his  face  that  the  Duchess  of  Mazarin  used  to  call  him  the 
"  Old  Satyr."  St.  Evremond  was  also  Norman  in  other  re- 
spects :  he  called  himself  a  thorough  Roman  Catholic,  yet  he 
despised  the  superstitions  of  his  church,  and  prepared  himself 
for  death  without  them.  When  asked  by  an  ecclesiastic  sent 
expressly  from  the  court  of  Florence  to 'attend  his  death-bed, 
if  he  "  would  be  reconciled,"  he  answered,  "  With  all  my  heart ; 
I  would  fain  be  reconciled  to  my  stomach,  which  no  longer 
performs  its  usual  functions."  And  his  talk,  we  are  told,  dur- 
ing the  fortnight  that  preceded  his  death,  was  not  regret  for  a 
life  we  should,  in  seriousness,  call  misspent,  but  because  par- 
tridges and  pheasants  no  longer  suited  his  condition,  and  he 
was  obliged  to  be  reduced  to  boiled  meats.  No  one,  however, 
could  tell  what  might  also  be  passing  in  his  heart.  We  can 
not  always  judge  of  a  life,  any  more  than  of  a  drama,  by  its 
last  scene ;  but  this  is  certain,  that  in  an  age  of  blasphemy  St. 
Evremond  could  not  endure  to  hear  religion  insulted  by  ridi- 
cule. "  Common  decency,"  said  this  man  of  the  world,  "  and 


THE   MOST   BEAUTIFUL   WOMAN   IN   EUKOPE.  63 

a  due  regard  to  our  fellow-creatures,  would  not  permit  it." 
He  did  not,  it  seems,  refer  his  displeasure  to  a  higher  source 
— to  the  presence  of  the  Omniscient — who  claims  from  us  all 
not  alone  the  tribute  of  our  poor  frail  hearts  in  serious  mo- 
ments, but  the  deep  reverence  of  every  thought  in  the  hours 
of  careless  pleasure. 

It  was  now  St.  Evremond  who  taught  De  Grammont  to  col- 
lect around  him  the  wits  of  that  court,  so  rich  in  attractions, 
so  poor  in  honor  and  morality.  The  object  of  St.  Evremond's 
devotion,  though  he  had  at  the  era  of  the  Restoration  passed 
his  fiftieth  year,  was  Hortense  Mancini,  once  the  richest  heir- 
ess, and  still  the  most  beautiful  woman  in  Europe,  and  a  niece, 
on  her  mother's  side,  of  Cardinal  Mazarin's.  Hortense  had 
been  educated,  after  the  age  of  six,  in  France.  She  was  Ital- 
ian in  her  accomplishments,  in  her  reckless,  wild  disposition, 
opposed  to  that  of  the  French,  who  are  generally  calculating 
and  wary  even  in  their  vices :  she  was  Italian  in  the  style  of 
her  surpassing  beauty,  and  French  to  the  core  in  her  princi- 
ples. Hortense,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  had  been  married  to 
Armand  Due  de  Meilleraye  and  Mayenne,  who  had  fallen  so 
desperately  in  love  with  this  beautiful  child,  that  he  declared 
"if  he  did  not  marry  her  he  should  die  in  three  months." 
Cardinal  Mazarin,  although  he  had  destined  his  niece  Mary  to 
this  alliance,  gave  his  consent  on  condition  that  the  duke 
should  take  the  name  of  Mazarin.  The  cardinal  died  a  year 
after  this  marriage,  leaving  his  niece  Hortense  the  enormous 
fortune  of  £1,625,000  ;  yet  she  died  in  the  greatest  difficulties, 
and  her  corpse  was  seized  by  her  creditors. 

The  Due  de  Mayenne  proved  to  be  a  fanatic,  who  used  to 
waken  his  wife  in  the  dead  of  the  night  to  hear  his  visions ; 
who  forbade  his  child  to  be  nursed  on  fast-days ;  and  who  be- 
lieved himself  to  be  inspired.  After  six  years  of  wretchedness, 
poor  Hortense  petitioned  for  a  separation  and  a  division  of 
property.  She  quitted  her  husband's  home,  and  took  refuge 
first  in  a  nunnery,  where  she  showed  her  unbelief  or  her  irrev- 
erence, by  mixing  ink  with  holy  water,  that  the  poor  nuns 
might  black  their  faces  when  they  crossed  themselves ;  or,  in 
concert  with  Madame  de  Courcelles,  another  handsome  mar- 
ried woman,  she  used  to  walk  through  the  dormitories  in  the 
dead  of  night,  with  a  number  of  little  dogs  barking  at  their 
heels ;  then  she  filled  two  great  chests  that  were  over  the  dor- 
mitories with  water,  which  ran  over,  and,  penetrating  through 
the  chinks  of  the  floor,  wet  the  holy  sisters  in  their  beds.  At 
length  all  this  sorry  gayety  was  stopped  by  a  decree  that  Hor- 
tense was  to  return  to  the  Palais  Mazarin  ;  and  to  remain  there 
until  the  suit  for  a  separation  should  be  decided.  That  the  re- 


64  HOKTENSE    MANCINl'S    ADVENTURES. 

suit  should  be  favorable  was  doubtful :  therefore,  one  fine  night 
in  June,  1667,  Hortense  escaped.  She  dressed  herself  in  nialc 
attire,  and,  attended  by  a  female  servant,  managed  to  get 
through  the  gate  of  Paris,  and  to  enter  a  carriage.  Then  she 
fled  to  Switzerland ;  and,  had  not  her  flight  been  shared  by  the 
Chevalier  de  Rohan,  one  of  the  handsomest  men  in  France, 
one  could  hardly  have  blamed  an  escape  from  a  half-lunatic 
husband.  She  was  only  twenty-eight  when,  after  various  ad- 
ventures, she  came  in  all  her  unimpaired  beauty  to  England. 
Charles  was  captivated  by  her  charms,  and,  touched  by  her 
misfortunes,  he  settled  on  her  a  pension  of  £4000  a  year,  and 
gave  her  rooms  in  St.  James's.  Waller  sang  her  praise : 

"When  through  the  world  fair  Mazarine  had  rim, 
Bright  as  her  fellow- traveler,  the  sun: 
Hither  at  length  the  Eoman  eagle  flies, 
As  the  last  triumph  of  her  conquering  eyes." 

If  Hortense  failed  to  carry  off  from  the  Duchess  of  Ports- 
mouth— then  the  star  of  Whitehall — the  heart  of  Charles,  she 
found,  at  all  events,  in  St.  Evremond  one  of  those  French,  pla- 
tonic,  life-long  friends,  who,  as  Chateaubriand  worshiped  Mad- 
ame Recamier,  adored  to  the  last  the  exiled  niece  of  Mazarin. 
Every  day,  when  in  her  old  age  and  his,  the  warmth  of  love 
had  subsided  into  the  serener  affection  of  pitying,  and  yet  ad- 
miring friendship,  St.  Evremond  was  seen,  a  little  old  man  in  a 
black  coif,  carried  along  Pall  Mall  in  a  sedan  chair,  to  the 
apartment  of  Madame  Mazarin,  in  St.  James's.  He  always 
took  with  him  a  pound  of  butter,  made  in  his  own  little  dairy, 
for  her  breakfast.  When  De  Grammont  was  installed  at  the 
court  of  Charles,  Hortense  was,  however,  in  her  prime.  Her 
house  at  Chelsea,  then  a  country  village,  was  famed  for  its  so- 
ciety and  its  varied  pleasures.  St.  Evremond  has  so  well  de- 
scribed its  attractions  that  his  words  should  be  literally  given. 
"  Freedom  and  discretion  are  equally  to  be  found  there.  Ev- 
ery one  is  made  more  at  home  than  in  his  own  house,  and 
treated  with  more  respect  than  at  court.  It  is  true  that  there 
are  frequent  disputes  there,  but  they  are  those  of  knowledge 
and  not  of  anger.  There  is  play  there,  but  it  is  inconsidera- 
ble, and  only  practiced  for  its  amusement.  You  discover  in 
no  countenance  the  fear  of  losing,  nor  concern  for  what  is  lost. 
Some  are  so  disinterested  that  they  are  reproached  for  ex- 
pressing joy  when  they  lose,  and  regret  when  they  win.  Play 
is  followed  by  the  most  excellent  repasts  in  the  world.  There 
you  will  find  whatever  delicacy  is  brought  from  France,  and 
whatever  is  curious  from  the  Indies.  Even  the  commonest 
meats  have  the  rarest  relish  imparted  to  them.  There  is  nei- 
ther a  plenty  which  gives  a  notion  of  extravagance,  nor  a  fru- 
gality that  discovers  penury  or  meanness." 


ANECDOTE  OP  LORD  DORSET.  65 

What  an  assemblage  it  must  have  been !  Here  lolls  Charles, 
Lord  Buckhurst,  afterward  Lord  Dorset,  the  laziest,  in  matters 
of  business  or  court  advancement — the  boldest,  in  point  of 
frolic  and  pleasure,  of  all  the  wits  and  beaux  of  his  time.  His 
youth  had  been  full  of  adventure  and  of  dissipation.  "  I  know 
not  how  it  is,"  said  Wilmot,  Lord  Rochester,  "but  my  Lord 
Dorset  can  do  any  thing,  and  is  never  to  blame."  He  had,  in 
truth,  a  heart ;  he  could  bear  to  hear  others  praised ;  he  de- 
spised the  arts  of  courtiers ;  he  befriended  the  unhappy ;  he 
was  the  most  engaging  of  men  in  manners,  the  most  lovable 
and  accomplished  of  human  beings ;  at  once  poet,  philanthro- 
pist, and  wit ;  he  was  also  possessed  of  chivalric  notions,  and 
of  daring  courage. 

Like  his  royal  master,  Lord  Dorset  had  traveled  ;  and  when 
made  a  gentleman  of  the  bedchamber  to  Charles  II.,  he  was 
not  unlike  his  sovereign  in  other  traits ;  so  full  of  gayety,  so 
high-bred,  so  lax,  so  courteous,  so  convivial,  that  no  supper 
was  complete  without  him ;  no  circle  "  the  right  thing,"  unless 
Buckhurst,  as  he  was  long  called,  was  there  to  pass  the  bottle 
round,  and  to  keep  every  one  in  good  humor.  Yet,  he  had 
misspent  a  youth  in  reckless  immorality,  and  had  even  been  in 
Newgate  on  a  charge,  a  doubtful  charge,  it  is  true,  of  highway 
robbery  and  murder,  but  had  been  found  guilty  of  manslaugh- 
ter only.  He  was  again  mixed  up  in  a  disgraceful  affair  with 
Sir  Charles  Sedley.  When  brought  before  Sir  Robert  Hyde, 
then  Chief  Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas,  his  name  having 
been  mentioned,  the  judge  inquired  whether  that  was  the 
Buckhurst  lately  tried  for  robbery  ?  and  when  told  it  was,  he 
asked  him  whether  he  had  so  soon  forgotten  his  deliverance  at 
that  time :  and  whether  it  would  not  better  become  him  to 
have  been  at  his  prayers  begging  God's  forgiveness,  than  to 
come  into  such  courses  again  ? 

The  reproof  took  effect,  and  Buckhurst  became  what  was 
then  esteemed  a  steady  man ;  he  volunteered  and  fought  gal- 
lantly in  the  fleet,  under  James  Duke  of  York ;  and  he  com- 
pleted his  reform,  to  all  outward  show,  by  marrying  Lady  Fal- 
mouth.*  Buckhurst,  in  society,  the  most  good-tempered  of 
men,  was  thus  referred  to  by  Prior,  in  his  poetical  epistle  to 
Fleetwood  Sheppard : 

"When  crowding  folks,  with  strange  ill  faces, 
Were  making  legs  and  begging  places ; 

*  The  Earl  of  Dorset  married  Elizabeth,  widow  of  Charles  Berkeley,  Earl 
of  Falmouth,  and  daughter  of  Hervey  Bagot,  Esq.,  of  Pipe  Hall,  Warwick- 
shire, who  died  without  issue.  He  married,  7th  March,  1684-5,  Lady  Mary 
Compton,  daughter  of  James  Earl  of  Northampton. 


06  LORD   ROCHESTER   IN    HIS   ZENITH. 

And  some  with  patents,  some  with  merit, 
Tired  out  my  good  Lord  Dorset's  spirit." 

Yet  his  pen  was  full  of  malice,  while  his  heart  was  tender  to 
all.     Wilrnot,  Lord  Rochester,  cleverly  said  of  him  : — 

"For  pointed  satire  I  would  Buckhurst  chuse, 
The  best  good  man  with  the  worst-natured  muse." 

Still  more  celebrated  as  a  beau  and  wit  of  his  time,  was 
John  Wilmot,  Lord  Rochester.  He  was  the  son  of  Lord  Wil- 
niot, the  cavalier  who  so  loyally  attended  Charles  II.  after  the 
battle  of  Worcester ;  and,  as  the  offspring  of  that  loyalist,  was 
greeted  by  Lord  Clarendon,  then  Chancellor  of  the  University 
of  Oxford,  when  he  took  his  degree  as  Master  of  Arts,  with  a 
kiss.*  The  young  nobleman  then  traveled,  according  to  cus- 
tom ;  and  then  most  unhappily  for  himself  and  for  others, 
whom  he  corrupted  by  his  example,  he  presented  himself  at 
the  court  of  Charles  II.  He  was  at  this  time  a  youth  of  eight- 
een, and  one  of  the  handsomest  persons  of  his  age.  The  face 
of  Buckhurst  was  hard  and  plain  ;  that  of  De  Grammont  had 
little  to  redeem  it  but  its  varying  intelligence ;  but  the  coun- 
tenance of  the  young  Earl  of  Rochester  was  perfectly  symmet- 
rical :  it  was  of  a  long  oval,  with  large,  thoughtful,  sleepy  eyes ; 
the  eyebrows  arched  and  high  above  them ;  the  brow,  though 
concealed  by  the  curls  of  the  now  modest  wig,  was  high  and 
smooth  ;  the  nose,  delicately  shaped,  somewhat  aquiline ;  the 
mouth  full,  but  perfectly  beautiful,  was  set  off  by  a  round  and 
well-formed  chin.  Such  was  Lord  Rochester  in  his  zenith ; 
and  as  he  came  forward  on  state  occasions,  his  false  light  curls 
hanging  down  on  his  shoulders — a  cambric  kerchief  loosely  tied, 
so  as  to  let  the  ends,  worked  in  point,  fall  gracefully  down ; 
his  scarlet  gown  in  folds  over  a  suit  of  light  steel  armor — for 
men  had  become  carpet  knights  then,  and  the  coat  of  mail 
worn  by  the  brave  cavaliers  was  now  less  warlike,  and  was 
mixed  up  with  robes,  ruffles,  and  rich  hose — and  when  in  this 
guise  he  appeared  at  Whitehall,  all  admired ;  and  Charles  was 
enchanted  with  the  simplicity,  the  intelligence,  and  modesty 
of  one  who  was  then  an  ingenuous  youth,  with  good  aspira- 
tions and  a  staid  and  decorous  demeanor. 

Woe  to  Lady  Rochester — woe  to  the  mother  who  trusted 
her  son's  innocence  in  that  vitiated  court !  Lord  Rochester 
forms  one  of  the  many  instances  we  daily  behold,  that  it  is  the 
inexperienced,  the  ignorant,  who  fall  most  deeply,  as  wrell  as 
most  early,  into  temptation.  He  soon  lost  every  trace  of  vir- 
tue— of  principle,  even  of  deference  to  received  notions  of  pro- 

*  Lord  Rochester  succeeded  to  the  Earldom  in  1659.  It  was  created  by 
Charles  II.  in  1652,  at  Paris. 


HIS    COURAGE    AND   WIT.  67 

priety.  For  a  while  there  seemed  hopes  that  he  would  not 
wholly  fall :  courage  was  his  inheritance,  and  he  distinguished 
himself  in  1665,  when,  as  a  volunteer,  he  went  in  quest  of  the 
Dutch  East  India  Fleet,  and  served  with  heroic  gallantry  un- 
der Lord  Sandwich.  And  when  he  returned  to  court,  there 
was  a  partial  improvement  in  his  conduct.  He  even  looked 
back  upon  his  former  indiscretions  with  horror :  he  had  now 
shared  in  the  realities  of  life :  he  had  grasped  a  high  and  hon- 
orable ambition ;  but  he  soon  fell  away — soon  became  almost 
a  castaway.  "  For  five  years,"  he  told  Bishop  Burnet,  when 
on  his  death-bed,  "  I  was  never  sober."  His  reputation  as  a 
wit  must  rest,  in  the  present  day,  chiefly  upon  productions 
which  have  long  since  been  condemned  as  unreadable.  Strange 
to  say,  when  not  under  the  influence  of  wine,  he  was  a  con- 
stant student  of  classical  authors,  perhaps  the  worst  reading 
for  a  man  of  his  tendencies  :  all  that  was  satirical  and  impure 
attracting  him  most.  Boileau,  among  French  writers,  and 
Cowley  among  the  English,  were  his  favorite  authors.  He 
also  read  many  books  of  physic ;  for  long  before  thirty  his 
constitution  was  so  broken  by  his  life,  that  he  turned  his  at- 
tention to  remedies,  and  to  medical  treatment ;  and  it  is  re- 
markable how  many  men  of  dissolute  lives  take  up  the  same 
sort  of  reading,  in  the  vain  hope  of  repairing  a  course  of  disso- 
lute living.  As  a  writer,  his  style  was  at  once  forcible  and 
lively  ;  as  a  companion,  he  was  wildly  vivacious  :  madly,  peril- 
ously, did^he  outrage  decency,  insult  virtue,  profane  religion. 
Charles  II.  liked  him  on  first  acquaintance,  for  Rochester  was 
a  man  of  the  most  finished  and  fascinating  manners ;  but  at 
length  there  came  a  coolness,  and  the  witty  courtier  was  ban- 
ished from  Whitehall.  Unhappily  for  himself  he  was  recalled, 
and  commanded  to  wait  in  London  until  his  majesty  should 
choose  to  readmit  him  into  his  presence. 

Disguises  and  practical  jokes  were  the  fashion  of  the  day. 
The  use  of  the  mask,  which  was  put  down  by  proclamation 
soon  after  the  accession  of  Queen  Anne,  favored  a  series  of 
pranks  with  which  Lord  Rochester,  during  the  period  of  his 
living  concealed  in  London,  diverted  himself.  The  success  of 
his  scheme  was  perfect.  He  established  himself,  since  he  could 
not  go  to  Whitehall,  in  the  city.  "His  first  design,"  De 
Grammont  relates,  "  was  only  to  be  initiated  into  the  myster- 
ies of  those  fortunate  and  happy  inhabitants ;  that  is  to  say,  by 
changing  his  name  and  dress,  to  gain  admittance  to  their  feasts 
and  entertainments.  .  .  .  As  he  was  able  to  adapt  himself  to 
all  capacities  and  humors,  he  soon  deeply  insinuated  himself 
into  the  esteem  of  the  substantial  wealthy  aldermen,  and  into 
the  affections  of  their  more  delicate,  magnificent,  and  tender 


68  CREDULITY,  PAST   AND    PRESENT. 

ladies ;  he  made  one  in  all  their  feasts,  and  at  all  their  assem- 
blies ;  and  while  in  the  company  of  the  husbands,  he  declaim- 
ed against  the  faults  and  mistakes  of  government ;  he  joined 
their  wives  in  railing  against  the  profligacy  of  the  court  ladies, 
and  in  inveighing  against  the  king's  mistresses :  he  agreed  with 
them,  that  the  industrious  poor  were  to  pay  for  these  cursed 
extravagances;  that  the  City  beauties  were  not  inferior  to 
those  at  the  other  end  of  the  town,  .  .  .  after  which,  to  outdo 
their  murmurings,  he  said,  that  he  wondered  Whitehall  was 
not  yet  consumed  by  fire  from  heaven,  since  such  rakes  as 
Rochester,  Killigrew,  and  Sidney  were  suffered  there." 

This  conduct  endeared  him  so  much  to  the  City,  and  made 
him  so  welcome  at  their  clubs,  that  at  last  he  grew  sick  of 
their  cramming,  and  endless  invitations. 

He  now  tried  a  new  sphere  of  action ;  and  instead  of  return- 
ing, as  he  might  have  done,  to  the  court,  retreated  into  the 
most  obscure  corners  of  the  metropolis ;  and  again  changing 
his  name  and  dress,  gave  himself  out  as  a  German  doctor, 
named  Bendo,  who  professed  to  find  out  inscrutable  secrets, 
and  to  apply  infallible  remedies ;  to  know,  by  astrology,  all 
the  past,  and  to  foretell  the  future. 

If  the  reign  of  Charles  was  justly  deemed  an  age  of  high 
civilization,  it  was  also  one  of  extreme  credulity.  Unbelief  in 
religion  went  hand  in  hand  with  blind  faith  in  astrology  and 
witchcraft ;  in  omens,  divinations,  and  prophecies :  neither  let 
us  too  strongly  despise,  in  these  their  foibles,  our  ancestors. 
They  had  many  excuses  for  their  superstitions ;  and  for  their 
fears,  false  as  their  hopes,  and  equally  groundless.  The  circu- 
lation of  knowledge  was  limited :  the  public  journals,  that  part 
of  the  press  to  which  we  now  owe  inexpressible  gratitude  for 
its  general  accuracy,  its  enlarged  views,  its  purity,  its  informa- 
tion, was  then  a  meagre  statement  of  dry  facts ;  an  announce- 
ment, not  a  commentary.  "  The  Flying  Post,"  the  "  Daily 
Courant,"  the  names  of  which  may  be  supposed  to  imply 
speed,  never  reached  lone  country  places  till  weeks  after  they 
had  been  printed  on  their  one  duodecimo  sheet  of  thin  coarse 
paper.'  Religion,  too,  just  emerging  into  glorious  light  from 
the  darkness  of  popery,  had  still  her  superstitions ;  and  the 
mantle  that  priestcraft  had  contrived  to  throw  over  her  ex- 
quisite, radiant,  and  simple  form,  was  not  then  wholly  and 
finally  withdrawn.  Romanism  still  hovered  in  the  form  of 
credulity. 

But  now,  with  shame  be  it  spoken,  in  the  full  noonday 
genial  splendor  of  our  Reformed  Church,  with  newspapers, 
the  leading  articles  of  which  rise  to  a  level  with  our  greatest 
didactic  writers,  and  are  competent  even  to  form  the  mind  as 


AND   LA   BELLE   JENNINGS.  69 

well  as  to  amuse  the  leisure  hours  of  the  young  readers :  with 
every  species  of  direct  communication,  we  yet  hold  to  fallacies 
from  which  the  credulous  in  Charles's  time  would  have  shrunk 
in  dismay  and  disgust.  Table-turning,  spirit-rapping,  clairvoy- 
ance, Swedenborgianism,  and  all  that  family  of  follies,  would 
have  been  far  too  strong  for  the  faith  of  those  who  counted 
upon  dreams  as  their  guide,  or  looked  up  to  the  heavenly 
planets  with  a  belief,  partly  superstitious,  partly  reverential, 
for  their  guidance ;  and  in  a  dim  and  flickering  faith  trusted 
to  their  stars. 

"Dr.  Bendo,"  therefore,  as  Rochester  was  called — handsome, 
witty,  unscrupulous,  and  perfectly  acquainted  with  the  then 
small  circle  of  the  court — was  soon  noted  for  his  wonderful 
revelations.  Chamber-women,  waiting-maids,  and  shop-girls 
Avere  his  first  customers ;  but,  very  soon,  gay  spinsters  from 
the  court  came  in  their  hoods  and  masks  to  ascertain,  with 
anxious  faces,  their  fortunes ;  while  the  cunning,  sarcastic 
"  Dr.  Bendo,"  noted  in  his  diary  all  the  intrigues  which  were 
confided  to  him  by  these  lovely  clients.  La  Belle  Jennings, 
the  sister  of  Sarah,  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  was  among  his 
disciples ;  she  took  with  her  the  beautiful  Miss  Price,  and,  dis- 
guising themselves  as  orange-girls,  these  young  ladies  set  off 
in  a  hackney-coach  to  visit  Dr.  Bendo ;  but,  when  within  half 
a  street  of  the  supposed  fortune-teller's,  were  prevented  by  the 
interruption  of  a  dissolute  courtier  named  Brounker. 

"Every  thing  by  turns  and  nothing  long."  When  Lord 
Rochester  was  tired  of  being  an  astrologer,  he  used  to  roam 
about  the  streets  as  a  beggar:  then  he  kept  a  footman  who 
knew  the  Court  well,  and  he  used  to  dress  him  up  in  a  red 
coat,  supply  him  with  a  musket,  like  a  sentinel,  and  send  him 
to  watch  at  the  doors  of  all  the  fine  ladies,  to  find  out  their 
goings  on :  afterward,  Lord  Rochester  would  retire  to  the 
country,  and  write  libels  on  these  fair  victims,  and,  one  day, 
offered  to  present  the  king  with  one  of  his  lampoons ;  but, 
being  tipsy,  gave  Charles,  instead,  one  written  upon  himself. 

At  this  juncture  we  read  with  sorrow  Bishop  Burnet's  forci- 
ble description  of  his  career : 

"  He  seems  to  have  freed  himself  from  ah1  impressions  of 
virtue  or  religion,  of  honor  or  good-nature. . . .  He  had  but  one 
maxim,  to  which  he  adhered  firmly,  that  he  has  to  do  every 
thing,  and  deny  himself  in  nothing  that  might  maintain  his 
greatness.  He  was  unhappily  made  for  drunkenness,  for  he 
had  drunk  all  his  friends  dead,  and  was  able  to  subdue  two  or 
three  sets  of  drunkards  one  after  another ;  so  it  scarce  ever 
appeared  that  he  was  disordered  after  the  greatest  drinking: 
an  hour  or  two  of  sleep  carried  all  off  so  entirely,  that  no  sign 
of  them  remained.  .  .  .  This  had  a  terrible  conclusion." 


70  LA   TRISTE    HERITIERE. 

Like  many  other  men,  Rochester  might  have  been  saved  by 
being  kept  far  from  the  scene  of  temptation.  While  he  re- 
mained in  the  country  he  was  tolerably  sober,  perhaps  steady. 
When  he  approached  Brentford  on  his  route  to  London,  his 
old  propensities  came  upon  him. 

When  scarcely  out  of  his  boyhood  he  carried  off  a  young 
heiress,  Elizabeth  Mallet,  whom  De  Grammont  calls  La  triste 
heritiere :  and  triste,  indeed,  she  naturally  was.  Possessed  of 
a  fortune  of  £2500  a  year,  this  young  lady  was  marked  out  by 
Charles  II.  as  a  victim  for  the  profligate  Rochester.  But  the 
reckless  young  wit  chose  to  take  his  own  way  of  managing 
the  matter.  One  night,  after  supping  at  Whitehall,  with  Miss 
Stuart,  the  young  Elizabeth  was  returning  home  with  her 
grandfather,  Lord  Haly,  when  their  coach  was  suddenly  stop- 
ped near  Charing  Cross  by  a  number  of  bravos,  both  on  horse- 
back and  on  foot — the  "Roaring  Boys  and  Mohawks,"  who 
were  not  extinct  even  in  Addison's  time.  They  lifted  the  af- 
frighted girl  out  of  the  carriage,  and  placed  her  in  one  which 
had  six  horses ;  they  then  set  off  for  Uxbridge,  and  were  over- 
taken; but  the  outrage  ended  in  marriage,  and  Elizabeth  be- 
came the  unhappy,  neglected  Countess  of  Rochester.  Yet  she 
loved  him — perhaps  in  ignorance  of  all  that  was  going  on 
while  she  staid  with  her  four  children  at  home. 

"If,"  she  writes  to  him,  "I  could  have  been  troubled  at 
any  thing,  when  I  had  the  happiness  of  receiving  a  letter  from 
you,  I  should  be  so,  because  you  did  not  name  a  time  when  I 
might  hope  to  see  you,  the  uncertainty  of  which  very  much 
afflicts  me.  .  .  .  Lay  your  commands  upon  me  what  I  am  to  do, 
and  though  it  be  to  forget  my  children,  and  the  long  hope  I 
have  lived  in  of  seeing  you,  yet  will  I  endeavor  to  obey  you ; 
or  in  the  memory  only  torment  myself,  without  giving  you  the 
trouble  of  putting  you  in  mind  that  there  lives  a  creature  as 

"  Your  faithful,  humble  servant." 

And  he,  in  reply :  "  I  went  away  (to  Rochester)  like  a  ras- 
cal, without  taking  leave,  dear  wife.  It  is  an  unpolished  way 
of  proceeding,  which  a  modest  man  ought  to  be  ashamed  of. 
I  have  left  you  a  prey  to  your  own  imaginations  among  my 
relations,  the  worst  of  damnations.  But  there  will  come  an 
hour  of  deliverance,  till  when,  may  my  mother  be  merciful 
unto  you!  So  I  commit  you  to  what  I  shall  ensue,  woman 
to  woman,  wife  to  mother,  in  hopes  of  a  future  appearance  in 
glory.  .  .  . 

"  Pray  write  as  often  as  you  have  leisure,  to  your 

"  ROCHESTER." 


RETRIBUTION   AND   REFORMATION.  71 

To  his  son,  he  writes :  "  You  are  now  grown  big  enough  to 
be  a  man,  if  you  can  be  wise  enough ;  and  the  way  to  be  truly 
wise  is  to  serve  God,  learn  your  book,  and  observe  the  in- 
structions of  your  parents  first,  and  next  your  tutor,  to  whom 
I  have  entirely  resigned  you  for  this  seven  years ;  and  accord- 
ing as  you  employ  that  time,  you  are  to  be  happy  or  unhappy 
forever.  I  have  so  good  an  opinion  of  you,  that  I  am  glad  to 
think  you  will  never  deceive  me.  Dear  child,  learn  your  book 
and  be  obedient,  and  you  will  see  what  a  father  I  shall  be  to 
you.  You  shall  want  no  pleasure  while  you  are  good,  and 
that  you  may  be  good  are  my  constant  prayers." 

Lord  Rochester  had  not  attained  the  age  of  thirty,  when  he 
was  mercifully  awakened  to  a  sense  of  his  guilt  here,  his  peril 
hereafter.  It  seemed  to  many  that  his  very  nature  was  so 
warped  that  penitence  in  its  true  sense  could  never  come  to 
him ;  but  the  mercy  of  God  is  unfathomable ;  He  judges  not 
as  man  judges ;  He  forgives,  as  man  knows  not  how  to  forgive. 

"  God,  or  kind  Master,  merciful  as  just, 
Knowing  our  frame,  remembers  man  is  dust : 
He  marks  the  dawn  of  every  virtuous  aim, 
And  fans  the  smoking  flax  into  a  flame ; 
He  hears  the  language  of  a  silent  tear, 
And  sighs  are  incense  from  a  heart  sincere." 

And  the  reformation  of  Rochester  is  a  confirmation  of  the  doc- 
trine of  a  special  Providence,  as  well  as  of  that  of  a  retribution 
even  in  this  life. 

The  retribution  came  in  the  form  of  an  early  but  certain  de- 
cay ;  of  a  suffering  so  stern,  so  composed  of  mental  and  bodily 
anguish,  that  never  was  man  called  to  repentance  by  a  voice 
so  distinct  as  Rochester.  The  reformation  was  sent  through 
the  instrumentality  of  one  who  had  been  a  sinner  like  him- 
self, who  had  sinned  with  him ;  an  unfortunate  lady,  who,  in 
her  last  hours,  had  been  visited,  reclaimed,  consoled,  by  Bish- 
op Burnet.  Of  this,  Lord  Rochester  had  heard.  He  was  then, 
to  all  appearance,  recovering  from  his  last  sickness.  He  sent 
for  Burnet,  who  devoted  to  him  one  evening  every  week  of 
that  solemn  winter  when  the  soul  of  the  penitent  sought  recon- 
ciliation and  peace.  » 

The  conversion  was  not  instantaneous ;  it  was  gradual,  pene- 
trating, effective,  sincere.  Those  who  wish  to  gratify  curiosi- 
ty concerning  the  death-bed  of  one  who  had  so  notoriously  sin- 
ned, will  read  Burnet's  account  of  Rochester's  illness  and  death 
with  deep  interest ;  and  nothing  is  so  interesting  as  a  death- 
bed. Those  who  delight  in  works  of  nervous  thought  and 
elevated  sentiments  will  read  it  too,  and  arise  from  the  perusal 
gratified.  Those,  however,  who  are  true,  contrite  Christians 


72 

will  go  still  farther ;  they  will  own  that  few  works  so  intense- 
ly touch  the  holiest  and  highest  feelings ;  few  so  absorb  the 
heart ;  few  so  greatly  show  the  vanity  of  life  ;  the  unspeakable 
value  of  a  purifying  faith.  "  It  is  a  book  which  the  critic," 
says  Dr.  Johnson,  "jnay  read  for  its  elegance,  the  philosopher 
for  its  arguments,  the  saint  for  its  piety." 

While  deeply  lamenting  his  own  sins,  Lord  Rochester  be- 
came anxious  to  redeem  his  former  associates  from  theirs. 

"  When  Wilmot,  Earl  of  Rochester,"*  writes  William  Thom- 
as, in  a  manuscript  preserved  in  the  British  Museum,  "  lay  on 
his  death-bed,  Mr.  Fanshawe  came  to  visit  him,  with  an  inten- 
tion to  stay  about  a  week  with  him.  Mr.  Fanshawe,  sitting 
by  the  bedside,  perceived  his  lordship  praying  to  God,  through 
Jesus  Christ,  and  acquainted  Dr.  Radclifte,  who  attended  my 
Lord  Rochester  in  this  illness  and  was  then  in  the  house,  with 
what  he  had  heard,  and  told  him  that  my  lord  was  certainly 
delirious,  for  to  his  knowledge,  he  said,  he  believed  neither  in 
God  nor  in  Jesus  Christ,  the  doctor,  who  had  often  heard 
him  pray  in  the  same  manner,  proposed  to  Mr.  Fanshawe  to  go 
up  to  his  lordship  to  be  further  satisfied  touching  this  affair. 
When  they  came  to  his  room,  the  doctor  told  my  lord  what 
Mr.  Fanshawe  said,  upon  which  his  lordship  addressed  himself 
to  Mr.  Fanshawe  to  this  effect :  '  Sir,  it  is  true,  you  and  I  have 
been  very  bad  and  profane  together,  and  then  I  was  of  the 
opinion  you  mention.  But  now  I  am  quite  of  another  mind, 
and  happy  am  I  that  I  am  so.  I  am  very  sensible  how  miser- 
able I  was  while  of  another  opinion.  Sir,  you  may  assure 
yourself  that  there  is  a  Judge  and  a  future  state ;'  and  so  en- 
tered into  a  very  handsome  discourse  concerning  the  last  judg- 
ment, future  state,  etc.,  and  concluded  with  a  serious  and  pa- 
thetic exhortation  to  Mr.  Fanshawe  to  enter  into  another 
course  of  life ;  adding  that  he  (Mr.  F.)  knew  him  to  be  his 
friend;  that  he  never  was  more  so  than  at  this  time;  and 
'sir,'  said  he,  'to  use  a  Scripture  expression,  I  am  not  mad, 
but  speak  the  words  of  truth  and  soberness.'  Upon  this  Mr. 
Fanshawe  trembled,  and  went  immediately  afoot  to  Wood- 
stock, and  there  hired  a  horse  to  Oxford,  and  thence  took 
coach  to  London." 

There  were  other  butterflies  in  that  gay  court ;  beaux  with- 
out wit ;  remorseless  rakes,  incapable  of  one  noble  thought  or 
high  pursuit ;  and  among  the  most  foolish  and  fashionable  of 
these  was  Henry  Jermyn,  Lord  Dover.  As  the  nephew  of 
Henry  Jermyn,  Lord  St.  Albans,  this  young  simpleton  was 

*  Mr.  William  Thomas,  the  writer  of  this  statement,  heard  it  from  Dr. 
"Radcliffe,  at  the  table  of  Speaker  Harley  (afterward  Earl  of  Oxford),  IGth 
June,  1702. 


LITTLE   JERMYN. AN   INCOMPARABLE   BEAUTY.  73 

ushered  into  a  court  life  with  the  most  favorable  auspices. 
Jermyn  Street  (built  in  1667)  recalls  to  us  the  residence  of 
Lord  St.  Albans,  the  supposed  husband  of  Henrietta  Maria. 
It  was  also  the  centre  of  fashion  when  Henry  Jermyn  the 
younger  was  launched  into  its  unholy  sphere.  Near  Eagle 
Passage  lived  at  that  time  La  Belle  Stuart,  Duchess  of  Rich- 
mond; next  door  to  her  Henry  Savile,  Rochester's  friend. 
The  locality  has  since  been  purified  by  worthier  associations : 
Sir  Isaac  Newton  lived  for  a  time  in  Jermyn  Street,  and  Gray 
lodged  there. 

It  was,  however,  in  De  Grammont's  time,  the  scene  of  all 
the  various  gallantries  which  were  going  on.  Henry  Jermyn 
was  supported  by  the  wealth  of  his  uncle,  that  uncle  who, 
while  Charles  II.  was  starving  at  Brussels,  had  kept  a  lavish 
table  in  Paris :  little  Jermyn,  as  the  younger  Jermyn  was  call- 
ed, owed  much  indeed  to  his  fortune,  which  had  procured  him 
great  eclat  at  the  Dutch  court.  His  head  was  large ;  his  feat- 
ures small ;  his  legs  short ;  his  physiognomy  was  not  positive- 
ly disagreeable,  but  he  was  affected  and  trifling,  and  his  wit 
consisted  in  expressions  learned  by  rote,  which  supplied  him 
either  with  raillery  or  with  compliments. 

This  petty,  inferior  being  had  attracted  the  regard  of  the 
Princess  Royal — afterward  Princess  of  Orange — the  daughter 
of  Charles  I.  Then  the  Countess  of  Castlemaine — afterward 
Duchess  of  Cleveland — became  infatuated  with  him ;  he  capti- 
vated also  the  lovely  Mrs.  Hyde,  a  languishing  beauty,  whom 
Sir  Peter  Lely  has  depicted  in  all  her  sleepy  attractions,  with 
her  ringlets  falling  lightly  over  her  snowy  forehead  and  down 
to  her  shoulders.  This  lady  was,  at  the  time  when  Jermyn 
came  to  England,  recently  married  to  the  son  of  the  great 
Clarendon.  She  fell  desperately  in  love  with  this  unworthy 
being ;  but,  happily  for  her  peace,  he  preferred  the  honor  (or 
dishonor)  of  being  the  favorite  of  Lady  Castlemaine,  and  Mrs. 
Hyde  escaped  the  disgrace  she  perhaps  merited. 

De  Grammont  appears  absolutely  to  have  hated  Jermyn ; 
not  because  he  was  immoral,  impertinent,  and  contemptible, 
but  because  it  was  Jermyn's  boast  that  no  woman,  good  or 
bad,  could  resist  him.  Yet,  in  respect  to  their  unprincipled 
life,  Jermyn  and  De  Grammont  had  much  in  common.  The 
count  was  at  this  time  an  admirer  of  the  foolish  beauty,  Jane 
Middleton ;  one  of  the  loveliest  women  of  a  court  where  it 
was  impossible  to  turn  without  seeing  loveliness. 

Mrs.  Middleton  was  the  daughter  of  Sir  Roger  Needham ; 
and  she  has  been  described,  even  by  the  grave  Evelyn,  as  a 
"  famous,  and,  indeed,  incomparable  beauty."  A  coquette,  she 
was,  however,  the  friend  of  intellectual  men ;  and  it  was  prob- 

D 


74        ANTHONY    HAMILTON,  DE   GRAMMONT's    BIOGRAPHER. 

ably  at  the  house  of  St.  Evremond  that  the  count  first  saw  her. 
Her  figure  was  good ;  she  was  fair  and  delicate ;  and  she  had 
so  great  a  desire,  Count  Hamilton  relates,  to  "  appear  magnifi- 
cently, that  she  was  ambitious  to  vie  with  those  of  the  great- 
est fortunes,  though  unable  to  support  the  expense." 

Letters  and  presents  now  flew  about.  Perfumed  gloves, 
pocket  looking-glasses,  elegant  boxes,  apricot  paste,  essences, 
and  other  small  wares  arrived  weekly  from  Paris:  English 
jewelry  still  had  the  preference,  and  was  liberally  bestowed  ; 
yet  Mrs.  Middleton,  affected  and  somewhat  precise,  accepted 
the  gifts  but  did  not  seem  to  encourage  the  giver. 

The  Count  de  Grammont,  piqued,  was  beginning  to  turn 
his  attention  to  Miss  Warmestre,  one  of  the  queen's  maids  of 
honor,  a  lively  brunette,  and  a  contrast  to  the  languid  Mrs. 
Middleton,  when,  happily  for  him,  a  beauty  appeared  on  the 
scene,  and  attracted  him,  by  higher  qualities  than  mere  looks, 
to  a  real,  fervent,  and  honorable  attachment. 

Among  the  few  respected  families  of  that  period  was  that  of 
Sir  George  Hamilton,  the  fourth  son  of  James,  Earl  of  Aber- 
corn,  and  of  Mary,  granddaughter  of  Walter,  eleventh  Earl 
of  Ormond.  Sir  George  had  distinguished  himself  during  the 
civil  wars :  on  the  death  of  Charles  I.  he  had  retired  to  France, 
but  returned,  after  the  Restoration,  to  London,  with  a  large 
family,  all  intelligent  and  beautiful. 

From  their  relationship  to  the  Ormond  family,  the  Hamil- 
tons  were  soon  installed  in  the  first  circles  of  fashion.  The 
Duke  of  Ormond's  sons  had  been  in  exile  with  the  king ;  they 
now  added  to  the  lustre  of  the  court  after  his  return.  The 
Earl  of  Arran,  the  second,  was  a  beau  of  the  true  Cavalier  or- 
der ;  clever  at  games,  more  especially  at  tennis,  the  king's  fa- 
vorite diversion ;  he  touched  the  guitar  weh1 ;  and  made  love 
ad  libitum.  Lord  Ossory,  his  elder  brother,  had  less  vivacity 
but  more  intellect,  and  possessed  a  liberal,  honest  nature,  and 
an  heroic  character. 

All  the  good  qualities  of  these  two  young  noblemen  seem 
to  have  been  united  in  Anthony  Hamilton,  of  whom  De  Gram- 
mont gives  the  following  character : — "  The  elder  of  the  Ham- 
iltons,  their  cousin,  was  the  man  who,  of  all  the  court,  dressed 
best ;  he  was  well  made  in  his  person,  and  possessed  those  hap- 
py talents  which  lead  to  fortune,  and  procure  success  in  love : 
he  was  a  most  assiduous  courtier,  had  the  most  lively  wit,  the 
most  polished  manners,  and  the  most  punctual  attention  to  his 
master  imaginable ;  no  person  danced  better,  nor  was  any  one 
a  more  general  lover — a  merit  of  some  account  in  a  court  en- 
tirely devoted  to  love  and  gallantry.  It  is  not  at  all  surpris- 
ing that,  with  these  qualities,  he  succeeded  my  Lord  Falmouth 
in  the  king's  favor." 


THE  THREE   COURTS.  75 

The  fascinating  person  thus  described  was  born  in  Ireland  : 
he  had  already  experienced  some  vicissitudes,  which  were  re- 
newed at  the  Revolution  of  1688,  when  he  fled  to  France — the 
country  in  which  he  had  spent  his  youth — and  died  at  St.  Ger- 
mains  in  1720,  aged  seventy-four.  His' poetry  and  his  fairy 
tales  are  forgotten ;  but  his  "  Memoirs  of  the  Count  de  Gram- 
mont"  is  a  work  which  combines  the  vivacity  of  a  French  writ- 
er with  the  truth  of  an  English  historian. 

Ormond  Yard,  St.  James's  Square,  was  the  London  resi- 
dence of  the  Duke  of  Ormond :  the  garden-wall  of  Ormond 
House  took  up  the  greater  part  of  York  Street:  the  Hamilton 
family  had  a  commodious  house  in  the  same  courtly  neighbor- 
hood ;  and  the  cousins  mingled  continually.  Here  persons  of 
the  greatest  distinction  constantly  met ;  and  here  the  "Cheva- 
lier de  Grammont,"  as  he  was  still  called,  was  received  in  a 
manner  suitable  to  his  rank  and  style  ;  and  soon  regretted  that 
he  had  passed  so  much  time  in  other  places ;  for,  after  he  once 
knew  the  charming  Hamiltons,  he  wished  for  no  other  friends. 

There  were  three  courts  at  that  time  in  the  capital ;  that  at 
Whitehall,  in  the  king's  apartments  ;  that  in  the  queen's,  in  the 
same  palace  ;  and  that  of  Henrietta  Maria,  the  Queen  Mother, 
as  she  was  styled,  at  Somerset  House.  Charles's  was  pre-em- 
inent in  immorality,  and  in  the  daily  outrage  of  all  decency; 
that  of  the  unworthy  widow  of  Charles  I.  was  just  bordering 
on  impropriety  ;  that  of  Katherine  of  Braganza  was  still  dec- 
orous, though  not  irreproachable.  Pepys,  in  his  Diary,  has 
this  passage  : — "  Visited  Mrs.  Ferrers,  and  stayed  talking  with 
her  a  good  while,  there  being  a  little,  proud,  ugly,  talking  lady 
there,  that  was  much  crying  up  the  queene-mother's  court  at 
Somerset  House,  above  our  queen's;  there  being  before  her  no 
allowance  of  laughing  and  mirth  that  is  at  the  other's ;  and, 
indeed,  it  is  observed  that  the  greatest  court  nowadays  is 
there.  Thence  to  Whitehall,  where  I  carried  my  wife  to  see 
the  queene  in  her  presence-chamber ;  and  the  maydes  of  hon- 
our and  the  young  Duke  of  Monmouth,  playing  at  cards." 

Queen  Katherine,  notwithstanding  that  the  first  words  she 
was  ever  known  to  say  in  English  were  "  You  lie  /"  was  one 
of  the  gentlest  of  beings.  Pepys  describes  her  as  having  a 
modest,  innocent  look,  among  all  the  demireps  with  whom  she 
was  forced  to  associate.  Again  we  turn  to  Pepys,  an  anec- 
dote of  whose  is  characteristic  of  poor  Katherine's  submissive, 
uncomplaining  nature : 

"  With  Creed,  to  the  King's  Head  ordinary ;  .  .  .  .  and  a 
pretty  gentleman  in  our  company,  who  confirms  my  Lady  Cas- 
tlemaine's  being  gone  from  court,  but  knows  not  the  reason ; 
he  told  us  of  one  wipe  the  queene,  a  little  while  ago,  did  give 


76  LA   BELLE   HAMILTON. 

her,  when  she  come  in  and  found  the  queene  under  the  dress- 
er's hands,  and  had  been  so  long.  c  I  wonder  your  majesty,' 
says  she,  '  can  have  the  patience  to  sit  so  long  a-dressing  ?' 
4 1  have  so  much  reason  to  use  patience,'  says  the  queene, 
*  that  I  can  very  well  bear  with  it.' " 

It  was  in  the  court  of  this  injured  queen  that  De  Grammont 
went  one  evening  to  Mrs.  Middleton's  house :  there  was  a  ball 
that  night,  and  among  the  dancers  was  the  loveliest  creature 
that  De  Grammont  had  ever  seen.  His  eyes  were  riveted  on 
this  fair  form ;  he  had  heard  of,  but  never  till  then  seen  her 
whom  all  the  world  consented  to  call  "La  Belle  Hamilton," 
and  his  heart  instantly  echoed  the  expression.  From  this  time 
he  forgot  Mrs.  Middleton,  and  despised  Miss  Warmestre :  "  he 
found,"  he  said,  that  he  "  had  seen  nothing  at  court  till  this 
instant." 

"  Miss  Hamilton,"  he  himself  tells  us,  "  was  at  the  happy 
age  when  the  charms  of  the  fair  sex  begin  to  bloom ;  she  had 
the  finest  shape,  the  loveliest  neck,  and  most  beautiful  arms 
in  the  world ;  she  was  majestic  and  graceful  in  all  her  move- 
ments ;  and  she  was  the  original  after  which  all  the  ladies  cop- 
ied in  their  taste  and  air  of  dress.  Her  forehead  was  open, 
white,  and  smooth ;  her  hair  was  well  set,  and  fell  with  ease 
into  that  natural  order  which  it  is  so  difficult  to  imitate.  Her 
complexion  was  possessed  of  a  certain  freshness,  not  to  be 
equaled  by  borrowed  colors  ;  her  eyes  were  not  large,  but  they 
were  lively,  and  capable  of  expressing  whatever  she  pleased."* 
So  far  for  her  person ;  but  De  Grammont  was,  it  seems,  weary 
of  mere  external  charms :  it  was  the  intellectual  superiority 
that  riveted  his  feelings,  while  his  connoisseurship  in  beau- 
ty was  satisfied  that  he  had  never  yet  seen  any  one  so  per- 
fect. 

"  Her  mind,"  he  says,  "  was  a  proper  companion  for  such  a 
form :  she  did  not  endeavor  to  shine  in  conversation  by  those 
sprightly  sallies  which  only  puzzle,  and  with  still  greater  care 
she  avoided  that  affected  solemnity  in  her  discourses  which 
produces  stupidity;  but,  without  any  eagerness  to  talk,  she 
just  said  what  she  ought,  and  no  more.  ^She  had  an  admira- 
ble discernment  in  distinguishing  between  solid  and  false  wit ; 
and  far  from  making  an  ostentatious  display  of  her  abilities, 
she  was  reserved,  though  very  just  in  her  decisions.  Her  sen- 
timents were  always  noble,  and  even  lofty  to  the  highest  ex- 
tent, when  there  was  occasion ;  nevertheless,  she  was  less  pre- 
possessed with  her  own  merit  than  is  usually  the  case  with 
those  who  have  so  much.  Formed  as  we  have  described,  she 
could  not  fail  of  commanding  love ;  but  so  far  was  she  from 
*  See  De  Grammont's  Memoirs. 


HEK   PRACTICAL   JOKES.  79 

courting  it,  that  she  was  scrupulously  nice  with  respect  to 
those  whose  merit  might  entitle  them  to  form  any  pretensions 
to  her." 

Born  in  1641,  Elizabeth — for  such  was  the  Christian  name 
of  this  lovely  and  admirable  woman  —  was  scarcely  in  her 
twentieth  year  when  she  first  appeared  at  Whitehall.  Sir 
Peter  Lely  was  at  that  time  painting  the  Beauties  of  the  Court, 
and  had  done  full  justice  to  the  intellectual  and  yet  innocent 
face  that  riveted  De  Grammont.  He  had  depicted  her  with 
her  rich  dark  hair,  of  which  a  tendril  or  two  fell  on  her  ivory 
forehead,  adorned  at  the  back  with  large  pearls,  under  which 
a  gauze-like  texture  was  gathered  up,  falling  over  the  fair 
shoulders  like  a  veil :  a  full  corsage,  bound  by  a  light  band 
either  of  ribbon  or  of  gold  lace,  confining,  with  a  large  jewel  or 
button,  the  sleeve  on  the  shoulder,  disguised  somewhat  the  ex- 
quisite shape.  A  frill  of  fine  cambric  set  off,  while  in  white- 
ness it  scarce  rivaled,  the  shoulder  and  neck. 

The  features  of  this  exquisite  face  are  accurately  described 
by  De  Grammont,  as  Sir  Peter  has  painted  them.  "  The  mouth 
does  not  smile,  but  seems  ready  to  break  out  into  a  smile. 
Nothing  is  sleepy,  but  every  thing  is  soft,  sweet,  and  innocent 
in  that  face  so  beautiful  and  so  beloved." 

While  the  colors  were  fresh  on  Lely's  palettes,  James  Duke 
of  York,  that  profligate  who  aped  the  saint,  saw  it,  and  hence- 
forth paid  his  court  to  the  original,  but  was  repelled  with  fear- 
less hauteur.  The  dissolute  nobles  of  the  court  followed  his 
example,  even  to  the  "  lady-killer"  Jermyn,  but  in  vain.  Un- 
happily for  La  Belle  Hamilton,  she  became  sensible  to  the  at- 
tractions of  De  Grammont,  whom  she  eventuaUy  married. 

Miss  Hamilton,  intelligent  as  she  was,  lent  herself  to  the 
fashion  of  the  day,  and  delighted  in  practical  jokes  and  tricks. 
At  the  splendid  masquerade  given  by  the  queen  she  continued 
to  plague  her  cousin,  J^ady  Muskerry  ;  to  confuse  and  expose 
a  stupid  court  beauty,  a  Miss  Blaque ;  and  at  the  same  time  to 

E reduce  on  the  Count  de  Grammont  a  still  more  powerful  ef- 
jct  than  even  her  charms  had  done.     Her  success  in  hoaxing 
— which  we  should  now  think  both  perilous  and  indelicate — 
seems  to  have  only  riveted  the  chain,  which  was  drawn  around 
him  more  strongly. 

His  friend,  or  rather  his  foe,  St.  Evremond,  tried  in  vain  to 
discourage  the  chevalier  from  his  new  passion.  The  former 
tutor  was,  it  appeared,  jealous  of  its  influence,  and  hurt  that 
De  Grammont  was  now  seldom  at  his  house. 

De  Grammont' s  answer  to  his  remonstrances  was  very  char- 
acteristic. "  My  poor  philosopher,"  he  cried,  "  you  understand 
Latin  well — you  can  make  good  verses — you  are  acquainted 


80  THE   HOUSEHOLD   DEITY   OF   WHITEHALL. 

with  the  nature  of  the  stars  in  the  firmament — but  you  are 
wholly  ignorant  of  the  luminaries  in  the  terrestrial  globe." 

He  then  announced  his  intention  to  persevere,  notwithstand- 
ing all  the  obstacles  which  attached  to  the  suit  of  a  man  with- 
out either  fortune  or  character,  who  had  been  exiled  from  his 
own  country,  and  whose  chief  mode  of  li velihood  was  depend- 
ent on  the  gaming-table. 

One  can  scarcely  read  of  the  infatuation  of  La  Belle  Hamil- 
ton without  a  sigh.  During  a  period  of  six  years  their  mar- 
riage was  in  contemplation  only ;  and  De  Grammont  seems  to 
have  trifled  inexcusably  with  the  feelings  of  this  once  gay  and 
ever  lovely  girl.  It  was  not  for  want  of  means  that  De  Gram- 
mont thus  delayed  the  fulfillment  of  his  engagement.  Charles 
II.,  inexcusably  lavish,  gave  him  a  pension  of  1500  Jacobuses : 
it  was  to  be  paid  to  him  until  he  should  be  restored  to  the  fa- 
vor of  his  own  king.  The  fact  was  that  De  Grammont  con- 
tributed to  the  pleasures  of  the  court,  and  pleasure  was  the 
household  deity  of  Whitehall.  Sometimes,  in  those  days  of 
careless  gayety,  there  were  promenades  in  Spring  Gardens,  or 
the  Mall ;  sometimes  the  court  beauties  sallied  forth  on  horse- 
back; at  other  times  there  were  shows  on  the  river,  which 
then  washed  the  very  foundations  of  Whitehall.  There  in  the 
summer  evenings,  when  it  was  too  hot  and  dusty  to  walk,  Old 
Thames  might  be  seen  covered  with  little  boats,  filled  with 
court  and  city  beauties,  attending  the  royal  barges ;  collations, 
music,  and  fireworks  completed  the  scene,  and  De  Grammont 
always  contrived  some  surprise — some  gallant  show :  once  a 
concert  of  vocal  and  instrumental  music,  which  he  had  pri- 
vately brought  from  Paris,  struck  up  unexpectedly :  another 
time,  a  collation  brought  from  the  same  gay  capital  surpassed 
that  supplied  by  the  king.  Then  the  count,  finding  that  coach- 
es with  glass  windows,  lately  introduced,  displeased  the  ladies, 
because  their  charms  were  only  partially  seen  in  them,  sent  for 
the  most  elegant  and  superb  caleche  ever  seen :  it  came  after 
a  month's  journey,  and  was  presented  by  De  Grammont  to 
the  king.  It  was  a  royal  present  in  price,  for  it  had  cost  two 
thousand  livres.  The  famous  dispute  between  Lady  Castle- 
maine  and  Miss  Stuart,  afterward  Duchess  of  Richmond,  arose 
about  this  caleche.  The  Queen  and  the  Duchess  of  York  ap- 
peared first  in  it  in  Hyde  Park,  which  had  then  recently  been 
fenced  in  with  brick.  Lady  Castlemaine  thought  that  the 
caleche  showed  off  a  fine  figure  better  than  the  coach ;  Miss 
Stuart  was  of  the  same  opinion.  Both  these  grown-up  babies 
wished  to  have  the  coach  on  the  same  day,  but  Miss  Stuart 
prevailed. 

The  queen  condescended  to  laugh  at  the  quarrels  of  these 


A   CHAPLAIN   IN   LIVERY.  81 

two  foolish  women,  and  complimented  the  Chevalier  de  Gram- 
mont  on  his  present.  "  But  how  is  it,"  she  asked,  "  that  you 
do  not  even  keep  a  footman,  and  that  one  of  the  common  run- 
ners in  the  street  lights  you  home  with  a  link  ?" 

"Madam,"  he  answered,  "  the  Chevalier  de  Grammont  hates 
pomp :  my  link-boy  is  faithful  and  brave."  Then  he  told  the 
queen  that  he  saw  she  was  unacquainted  with  the  nation  of 
link-boys,  and  related  how  that  he  had,  at  one  time,  had  one 
hundred  and  sixty  around  his  chair  at  night,  and  people  had 
asked  "  whose  funeral  it  was  ?"  "As  for  the  parade  of  coach- 
es and  footmen,"  he  added,  "I  despise  it.  I  have  sometimes 
had  five  or  six  valets-de-chambre^  without  a  single  footman  in 
livery  except  my  chaplain." 

"  How !"  cried  the  queen,  laughing,  "  a  chaplain  in  livery  ? 
surely  he  was  not  a  priest." 

"Pardon,  Madame,  a  priest,  and  the  best  dancer  in  the 
world  of  the  Biscayan  jig." 

"  Chevalier,"  said  the  king,  "  tell  us  the  history  of  your 
chaplain  Poussatin." 

Then  De  Grammont  related  how,  when  he  was  with  the 
great  Conde,  after  the  campaign  of  Catalonia,  he  had  seen 
among  a  company  of  Catalans,  a  priest  in  a  little  black  jacket, 
skipping  and  frisking :  how  Conde  was  charmed,  and  how  they 
recognized  in  him  a  Frenchman,  and  how  he  offered  himself  to 
De  Grammont  for  his  chaplain.  De  Grammont  had  not  much 
need,  he  said,  for  a  chaplain  in  his  house,  but  he  took  the  priest, 
who  had  afterward  the  honor  of  dancing  before  Anne  of  Aus- 
tria, in  Paris. 

Suitor  after  suitor  interfered  with  De  Grammont's  at  last 
honorable  address  to  La  Belle  Hamilton.  At  length  an  inci- 
dent occurred  which  had  very  nearly  separated  them  forever. 
Philibert  de  Grammont  was  recalled  to  Paris  by  Louis  XIII. 
He  forgot,  Frenchman-like,  all  his  engagements  to  Miss  Ham- 
ilton, and  hurried  off.  He  had  reached  Dover,  when  her  two 
brothers  rode  up  after  him.  "  Chevalier  de  Grammont,"  they 
said,  "  have  you  forgotten  nothing  in  London  ?" 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  answered,  "  I  forgot  to  marry  your 
sister."  It  is  said  that  this  story  suggested  to  Moliere  the  idea 
of  Le  Mariage  force.  They  were,  however,  married. 

In  1669  La  Belle  Hamilton,  after  giving  birth  to  a  child, 
went  to  reside  in  France.  Charles  H.,  who  thought  she  would 
pass  for  a  handsome  woman  in  France,  recommended  her  to 
his  sister  Henrietta,  Duchess  of  Orleans,  and  begged  her  to  be 
kind  to  her. 

Henceforth  the  Chevalier  de  Grammont  and  his  wife  figured 
at  Versailles,  where  the  Countess  de  Grammont  was  appoint- 

D2 


82  DE  GEAMMONT'S  LAST  HOUKS. 

ed  Dame  de  Palais.  Her  career  was  less  brilliant  than  in  En- 
gland. The  French  ladies  deemed  her  haughty  and  old,  and 
even  termed  her  une  Anglaise  insupportable. 

She  had  certainly  too  much  virtue,  and  perhaps  too  much 
beauty  still,  for  the  Parisian  ladies  of  fashion  at  that  period  to 
admire  her. 

She  endeavored,  in  vain,  to  reclaim  her  libertine  husband, 
and  to  call  him  to  a  sense  of  his  situation  when  he  was  on  his 
death-bed.  Louis  XIV.  sent  the  Marquis  de  Dangeau  to  con- 
vert him,  and  to  talk  to  him  on  a  subject  little  thought  of  by 
De  Grammont — the  world  to  come.  After  the  marquis  had 
been  talking  for  some  time,  De  Grammont  turned  to  his  wife 
and  said,  "  Countess,  if  you  don't  look  to  it,  Dangeau  will  jug- 
gle you  out  of  my  conversion."  St.  Evremond  said  he  would 
gladly  die  to  go  off  with  so  successful  a  bon-mot. 

He  became,  however,  in  time,  serious,  if  not  devout  or  pen- 
itent. Ninon  de  1'Enclos  having  written  to  St.  Evremond  that 
the  Count  de  Grammont  had  not  only  recovered  but  had  be- 
come devout,  St.  Evremond  answered  her  in  these  words : 

"  I  have  learned  with  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  that  the  Count 
de  Grammout  has  recovered  his  former  health  and  acquired  a 
new  devotion."* 

A  report  having  been  circulated  that  De  Grammont  was 
dead,  St.  Evremond  expressed  deep  regret.  The  report  was 
contradicted  by  Ninon  de  1'Enclos.  The  count  was  then 
eighty-six  years  of  age ;  "  nevertheless  he  was,"  Ninon  says, 
u  so  young  that  I  think  him  as  lively  as  when  he  hated  sick 
people,  and  loved  them  after  they  had  recovered  their  health ;" 
a  trait  very  descriptive  of  a  man  whose  good-nature  was  al- 
ways on  the  surface,  but  whose  selfishness  was  deep  as  that 
of  most  wits  and  beaux,  who  are  spoiled  by  the  world,  and 

*  "  The  Count  de  Grammont  fell  dangerously  ill  in  the  year  1696,  of 
which  the  King  (Louis  XIV.)  being  informed,  and  knowing,  besides,  that 
he  was  inclined  to  libertinism,  he  was  pleased  to  send  the  Marquis  of  Dan- 
geau to  see  how  he  did,  and  to  advise  him  to  think  of  God.  Hereupon 
Count  de  Grammont,  turning  toward  his  wife,  who  had  ever  been  a  very  de- 
vout lady,  told  her,  '  Countess,  if  you  don't  look  to  it,  Dangeau  will  juggle 
you  out  of  my  conversion.'  Madame  de  1'Enclos  having  afterward  written 
to  M.  de  St.  Evremond  that  Count  de  Grammont  was  recovered,  and  turned 
devout,  'I  have  learned,'  answered  he  to  her,  'with  a  great  deal  of  pleasure 
that  Count  de  Grammont  has  recovered  his  former  health,  and  acquired  a 
new  devotion.  Hitherto  I  have  been  contented  with  being  a  plain,  honest 
man ;  but  I  must  do  something  more ;  and  I  only  wait  for  your  example  to 
become  a  devotee.  You  live  in  a  country  where  people  have  wonderful  ad- 
vantages of  saving  their  souls :  there,  vice  is  almost  as  opposite  to  the  mode 
as  virtue ;  sinning  passes  for  ill-breeding,  and  shocks  decency  and  good  man- 
ners as  much  as  religion.  Formerly  it  was  enough  to  be  wicked,  now  one 
must  be  a  scoundrel  withal,  to  be  damned  in  France.' " 


WHAT   MIGHT   HE   NOT   HAVE   BEEN?  83 

who,  in  return,  distrust  and  deceive  the  spoilers.  This  long 
life  of  eighty-six  years,  endowed  as  De  Grammont  was  with 
elasticity  of  spirits,  good  fortune,  considerable  talent,  an  ex- 
cellent position,  a  wit  that  never  ceased  to  flow  in  a  clear  cur- 
rent ;  with  all  these  advantages,  what  might  he  not  have  been 
to  society  had  his  energy  been  well  applied,  his  wit  innocent, 
his  talents  employed  worthily,  and  his  heart  as  sure  to  stand 
muster  as  his  manners  ? 


BEAU  FIELDING, 

"  LET  us  be  wise,  boys,  here's  a  fool  coming,"  said  a  sensible 
man,  when  he  saw  Beau  Nash's  splendid  carriage  draw  up  to 
the  door.  Is  a  beau  a  fool  ?  Is  a  sharper  a  fool  ?  Was  Bona- 
parte a  fool  ?  If  you  reply  "  no"  to  the  last  two  questions, 
you  must  give  the  same  answer  to  the  first.  A  beau  is  a  fox, 
but  not  a  fool — a  very  clever  fellow,  who,  knowing  the  weak- 
ness of  his  brothers  and  sisters  in  the  world,  takes  advantage 
of  it  to  make  himself  a  fame  and  a  fortune.  Nash,  the  son  of 
a  glass-merchant — Brummell,  the  hopeful  of  a  small  shopkeep- 
er— became  the  intimates  of  princes,  dukes,  and  fashionables ; 
were  petty  kings  of  Vanity  Fair,  and  were  honored  by  their 
subjects.  In  the  kingdom  of  the  blind,  the  one-eyed  man  is 
king;  in  the  realm  of  folly,  the  sharper  is  a  monarch.  The  only 
proviso  is,  that  the  cheat  come  not  within  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  law.  Such  a  cheat  is  the  beau  or  dandy,  or  fine  gentleman, 
who  imposes  on  his  public  by  his  clothes  and  appearance. 
Bond-fide  monarchs  have  done  as  much ;  Louis  XIV.  won  him- 
self the  title  of  Le  Grand  Monarque  by  his  manners,  his  dress, 
and  his  vanity.  Fielding,  Nash,  and  Brummell  did  nothing 
more.  It  is  not  a  question  whether  such  roads  to  eminence  be 
contemptible  or  not,  but  whether  their  adoption  in  one  station 
of  life  be  more  so  than  in  another.  Was  Brummell  a  whit 
more  contemptible  than  "  Wales  ?"  Or  is  John  Thomas,  the 
pride  and  glory  of  the  "  Domestics'  Free-and-Easy,"  whose 
whiskers,  figure,  face,  and  manner  are  all  superb,  one  atom 
more  ridiculous  than  your  recognized  beau  ?  I  trow  not. 
What  right,  then,  has  your  beau  to  a  place  among  wits  ?  I 
fancy  Chesterfield  would  be  much  disgusted  at  seeing  his  name 
side  by  side  with  that  of  Nash  in  this  volume ;  yet  Chesterfield 
had  no  objection,  when  at  Bath,  to  do  homage  to  the  king  of 
that  city,  and  may  have  prided  himself  on  exchanging  pinches 
from  diamond-set  snuff-boxes  with  that  superb  gold-laced  dig- 
nitary in  the  Pump-room.  Certainly,  people  who  thought 
little  of  Philip  Dormer  Stanhope  thought  a  great  deal  of  the 
glass-merchant's  reprobate  son  when  he  was  in  power,  and  sub- 
mitted without  a  murmur  to  his  impertinences.  The  fact  is, 
that  the  beaux  and  the  wits  are  more  intimately  connected  than 
the  latter  would  care  to  own  :  the  wits  have  all  been,  or  aspired 
to  be,  beaux,  and  beaux  have  had  their  fair  share  of  wit ;  both 


86  ON   WITS   AND  BEAUX. 

lived  for  the  same  purpose — to  shine  in  society ;  both  used  the 
same  means,  coats,  and  bon-mots.  The  only  distinction  is,  that 
the  garments  of  the  beaux  were  better,  and  their  sayings  not 
so  good  as  those  of  the  wits ;  while  the  conversation  of  the 
wits  was  better,  and  their  apparel  not  so  striking  as  those  of 
the  beaux.  So,  my  Lord  Chesterfield,  who  prided  yourself 
quite  as  much  on  being  a  fine  gentleman  as  on  being  a  fine  wit, 
you  can  not  complain  at  your  proximity  to  Mr.  Nash  and  oth- 
ers who  were  fine  gentlemen,  and  would  have  been  fine  wits 
if  they  could. 

Robert  Fielding  was,  perhaps,  the  least  of  the  beaux ;  but 
then,  to  make  up  for  this,  he  belonged  to  a  noble  family ;  he 
married  a  duchess,  and,  what  is  more,  he  beat  her.  Surely  in 
the  kingdom  of  fools  such  a  man  is  not  to  be  despised.  You 
may  be  sure  he  did  not  think  he  was,  for  was  he  not  made  the 
subject  of  two  papers  in  "  The  Tatler,"  and  what  more  could 
a  man  desire  ? 

His  father  was  a  Suffolk  squire,  claiming  relationship  with 
the  Earls  of  Denbigh,  and,  therefore,  with  the  Hapsburgs,  from 
whom  the  Beau  and  the  Emperors  of  Austria  had  the  common 
honor  of  being  descended.  Perhaps  neither  of  them  had  suf- 
ficient sense  to  be  proud  of  the  greatest  intellectual  ornament 
of  their  race,  the  author  of  "  Tom  Jones ;"  but  as  our  hero  was 
dead  before  the  humorist  was  born,  it  is  not  fair  to  conjecture 
what  he  might  have  thought  on  the  subject. 

It  does  not  appear  that  very  much  is  known  of  this  great 
gem  of  the  race  of  Hapsburg.  He  had  the  misfortune  to  be 
very  handsome,  and  the  folly  to  think  that  his  face  would  be 
his  fortune :  it  certainly  stood  him  in  good  stead  at  times,  but 
it  also  brought  him  into  a  lamentable  dilemma. 

His  father  was  not  rich,  and  sent  his  son  to  the  Temple  to 
study  laws  which  he  was  only  fitted  to  break.  The  young  Ado- 
nis had  sense  enough  to  see  that  destiny  did  not  beckon  him 
to  fame  in  the  gloom  of  a  musty  law  court,  and  removed  a  lit- 
tle farther  up  to  the  Thames,  and  the  more  fashionable  region 
of  Scotland  Yard.  Here,  where  now  Z.  300  repairs  to  report 
his  investigations  to  a  Commissioner,  the  young  dandies  of 
Charles  II.'s  day  strutted  in  gay  doublets,  swore  hasty  oaths 
of  choice  invention,  smoked  the  true  Tobago  from  huge  pipe- 
bowls,  and  ogled  the  fair  but  not  too  bashful  dames  who  pass- 
ed to  and  fro  in  their  chariots.  The  court  took  its  name  from 
the  royalties  of  Scotland,  who,  when  they  visited  the  South, 
were  there  lodged  as  being  conveniently  near  to  Whitehall 
Palace.  It  is  odd  enough  that  the  three  architects,  Inigo  Jones, 
Vanbrugh,  and  Wren,  all  lived  in  this  yard. 

It  was  not  to  be  supposed  that  a  man  who  could  so  well 


ORLANDO    OF    "THE   TATLEE."  87 

appreciate  a  handsome  face  and  well-cut  doublet  as  Charles  II. 
should  long  overlook  his  neighbor,  Mr.  Robert  Fielding,  and 
in  due  course  the  Beau,  who  had  no  other  diploma,  found  him- 
self in  the  honorable  position  of  a  justice  of  the  peace. 

The  emoluments  of  this  office  enabled  Orlando,  as  "The 
Tatler"  calls  him,  to  shine  forth  in  all  his  glory.  With  an  en- 
viable indifference  to  the  future,  he  launched  out  into  an  ex- 
penditure which  alone  would  have  made  him  popular  in  a 
country  where  the  heaviest  purse  makes  the  greatest  gentle- 
man. His  lackeys  were  arrayed  in  the  brightest  yellow  coats 
with  black  sashes — the  Hapsburg  colors.  He  had  a  carriage, 
of  course,  but  like  Sheridan,  whom  his  gave  so  much  trouble 
to  pay  for,  it  was  hired,  though  drawn  by  his  own  horses. 
This  carriage  was  described  as  being  shaped  like  a  sea-shell ; 
and  "  The  Tatler"  calls  it  "  an  open  tumbril  of  less  size  than 
ordinary,  to  show  the  largeness  of  his  limbs  and  the  grandeur 
of  his  personage  to  the  best  advantage."  The  said  limbs  were 
his  especial  pride :  he  gloried  in  the  strength  of  his  leg  and 
arm ;  and  when  he  walked  down  the  street,  he  was  followed 
by  an  admiring  crowd,  whom  he  treated  with  as  much  haugh- 
tiness as  if  he  had  been  the  emperor  himself,  instead  of  his 
cousin  five  hundred  times  removed.  He  used  his  strength  to 
good  or  bad  purpose,  and  was  a  redoubted  fighter  and  "bully, 
though  good-natured  withal.  In  the  Mall,  as  he  strutted,  he 
was  the  cynosure  of  all  female  eyes.  His  dress  had  all  the  ele- 
gance of  which  the  graceful  costume  of  that  period  was  capa- 
ble, though  Fielding  did  not,  like  Brummell,  understand  the 
delicacy  of  a  quiet,  but  studied  style.  Those  were  simpler, 
somewhat  more  honest  days.  It  was  not  necessary  for  a  man 
to  cloak  his  vices,  nor  be  ashamed  of  his  cloak.  The  beau 
then-a-day  openly  and  arrogantly  gloried  in  the  grandeur  of 
his  attire;  and  bragging  was  a  part  of  his  character.  Field- 
ing was  made  by  his  tailor;  Brummell  made  his  tailor:  the 
only  point  in  common  to  both,  was  that  neither  of  them  paid 
the  tailor's  bill.  The  fine  gentleman,  under  the  Stuarts,  was 
fine  only  in  his  lace  and  his  velvet  doublet;  his  language  was 
coarse,  his  manners  coarser,  his  vices  the  coarsest  of  all.  No 
wonder  when  the  king  himself  could  get  so  drunk  with  Sedley 
and  Buckhurst,  as  to  be  unable  to  give  an  audience  appointed 
for ;  and  when  the  chief  fun  of  his  two  companions  was  to  di- 
vest themselves  of  all  the  habiliments  which  civilization  has 
had  the  ill  taste  to  make  necessary,  and  in  that  state  run  about 
the  streets. 

Orlando  wore  the  finest  ruffles  and  the  heaviest  sword ;  his 
wig  was  combed  to  perfection ;  and  in  his  pocket  he  carried  a 
little  comb  with  which  to  arrange  it  from  time  to  time,  even 


88  ADONIS  IN   SEARCH    OP   A  WIFE. 

as  the  dandy  of  to-day  pulls  out  his  whiskers  or  curls  his 
mustache.  Such  a  man  could  not  be  passed  over;  and  ac- 
cordingly he  numbered  half  the  officers  and  gallants  of  the 
town  among  his  intimates.  He  drank,  swore,  and  swaggered, 
and  the  snobs  of  the  day  proclaimed  him  "  a  complete  gentle- 
man." 

His  impudence,  however,  was  not  always  tolerated.  In  the 
playhouses  of  the  day,  it  was  the  fashion  for  some  of  the  spec- 
tators to  stand  upon  the  stage,  and  the  places  in  that  position 
were  chiefly  occupied  by  young  gallants.  The  ladies  came 
most  in  masks ;  but  this  did  not  prevent  Master  Fielding  from 
making  his  remarks  very  freely,  and  in  no  very  refined  strain 
to  them.  The  modest  damsels,  whom  Pope  has  described, 

"  The  fair  sat  pouting  at  the  courtier's  play, 
And  not  a  mask  went  unimproved  away : 
The  modest  fan  was  lifted  up  no  more, 
And  virgins  smiled  at  what  they  blushed  before," 

were  not  too  coy  to  be  pleased  with  the  fop's  attentions,  and 
replied  in  like  strain.  The  players  were  unheeded ;  the  audi- 
ence laughed  at  the  improvised  and  natural  wit,  when  careful- 
ly prepared  dialogues  failed  to  fix  their  attention.  The  actors 
were  disgusted,  and,  in  spite  of  Master  Fielding's  herculean 
strength,  kicked  him  off  the  stage,  with  a  warning  not  to  come 
again. 

The  role  of  a  beau  is  expensive  to  keep  up;  and  our  justice 
of  the  peace  could  not,  like  Nash,  double  his  income  by  gam- 
ing. He  soon  got  deep  in  debt,  as  every  celebrated  dresser 
has  done.  The  old  story,  not  new  even  in  those  days,  was  en- 
acted, and  the  brilliant  Adonis  had  to  keep  watch  and  ward 
against  tailors  and  bailiffs.  On  one  occasion  they  had  nearly 
caught  him ;  but,  his  legs  being  lengthy,  he  gave  them  fair 
sport  as  far  as  St.  James's  Palace,  where  the  officers  on  guard 
rushed  out  to  save  their  pet,  and  drove  off  the  myrmidons  of 
the  law  at  the  point  of  the  sword. 

But  debts  do  not  pay  themselves,  nor  die,  and  Orlando  with 
all  his  strength  and  prowess  could  not  long  keep  off  the  con- 
stable. Evil  days  gloomed  at  no  very  great  distance  before 
him,  and  the  fear  of  a  sponging-house  and  debtors'  prison  com- 
pelled him  to  turn  his  handsome  person  to  account.  Had  he 
not  broken  a  hundred  hearts  already  ?  had  he  not  charmed  a 
thousand  pairs  of  beaming  eyes  ?  was  there  not  one  owner  of 
one  pair  who  was  also  possessed  of  a  pretty  fortune  ?  Who 
should  have  the  honor  of  being  the  wife  of  such  an  Adonis  ? 
who,  indeed,  but  she  who  could  pay  highest  for  it ;  and  who 
could  pay  with  a  handsome  income  but  a  well-dowered  widow  ? 
A  widow  it  must  be — a  widow  it  should  be.  Noble  indeed 


THE   SHAM   WIDOW.  89 

was  the  sentiment  which  inspired  this  great  man  to  sacrifice 
himself  on  the  altar  of  Hymen  for  the  good  of  his  creditors. 
Ye  young  men  in  the  Guards,  who  do  this  kind  of  thing  every 
day — that  is,  every  day  that  you  can  meet  with  a  widow  with 
the  proper  qualifications — take  warning  by  the  lamentable  his- 
tory of  Mr.  Robert  Fielding,  and  never  trust  to  "  third  par- 
ties." 

A  widow  was  found,  fat,  fair,  and  forty — and  oh ! — charm 
greater  far  than  all  the  rest — with  a  fortune  of  sixty  thousand 
pounds ;  this  was  a  Mrs.  Deleau,  who  lived  at  Whaddon  in 
Surrey,  and  at  Copthall  Court  in  London.  Nothing  could  be 
more  charming ;  and  the  only  obstacle  was  the  absence  of  all 
acquaintance  between  the  parties — for,  of  course,  it  was  im- 
possible for  any  widow,  whatever  her  attractions,  to  be  in- 
sensible to  those  of  Robert  Fielding.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, the  Beau  looked  about  for  an  agent,  and  found  one  in 
the  person  of  a  Mrs.  Villars,  hairdresser  to  the  widow.  He 
offered  this  person  a  handsome  douceur  in  case  of  success,  and 
she  was  to  undertake  that  the  lady  should  meet  the  gentleman 
in  the  most  unpremeditated  manner.  Various  schemes  were 
resorted  to :  with  the  alias,  for  he  was  not  above  an  alias,  of 
Major  General  Villars,  the  Beau  called  at  the  widow's  country 
house,  and  was  permitted  to  see  the  gardens.  At  a  window 
he  espied  a  lady,  whom  he  took  to  be  the  object  of  his  pursuit 
— bowed  to  her  majestically,  and  went  away,  persuaded  he 
must  have  made  an  impression.  But,  whether  the  widow  was 
wiser  than  wearers  of  weeds  have  the  reputation  of  being,  or 
whether  the  agent  had  really  no  power  in  the  matter,  the 
meeting  never  came  off. 

The  hairdresser  naturally  grew  anxious,  the  douceur  was 
too  good  to  be  lost,  and  as  the  widow  could  not  be  had,  some 
one  must  be  supplied  in  her  place. 

One  day  while  the  Beau  was  sitting  in  his  splendid  "  night- 
gown," as  the  morning-dress  of  gentlemen  was  then  called, 
two  ladies  were  ushered  into  his  august  presence.  He  had 
been  warned  of  this  visit,  and  was  prepared  to  receive  the 
yielding  widow.  The  one,  of  course,  was  the  hairdresser,  the 
other  a  young,  pretty,  and  apparently  modest  creature,  who 
blushed  much — though  with  some  difficulty — at  the  trying 
position  in  which  she  found  herself.  The  Beau,  delighted,  did 
his  best  to  reassure  her.  He  flung  himself  at  her  feet,  swore, 
with  oaths  more  fashionable  than  delicate,  that  she  was  the 
only  woman  he  ever  loved,  and  prevailed  on  the  widow  so  far 
as  to  induce  her  to  "  call  again  to-morrow." 

Of  course  she  came,  and  Adonis  was  in  heaven.  He  wrote 
little  poems  to  her — for,  as  a  gallant,  he  could  of  course  make 


90  WAYS   AND   MEANS. 

verses — serenaded  her  through  an  Italian  donna,  invited  her 
to  suppers,  at  which  the  delicacies  of  the  season  were  served 
without  regard  to  the  purveyor's  account,  and  to  which,  coy 
as  she  was,  she  consented  to  come,  and  clenched  the  engage- 
ment with  a  ring,  on  which  was  the  motto,  "  Tibi  Soli."  Nay, 
the  Beau  had  been  educated,  and  had  some  knowledge  of  "the 
tongues,"  so  that  he  added  to  these  attentions  the  farther  one 
of  a  song  or  two  translated  from  the  Greek.  The  widow  ought 
to  have  been  pleased,  and  was.  One  thing  only  she  stipulated, 
namely,  that  the  marriage  should  be  private,  lest  her  relations 
should  forbid  the  banns. 

Having  brought  her  so  far,  it  was  not  likely  that  the  for- 
tune-hunter would  stick  at  such  a  mere  trifle,  and  according- 
ly an  entertainment  was  got  up  at  the  Beau's  own  rooms,  a 
supper,  suitable  to  the  rank  and  wealth  of  the  widow,  pro- 
vided by  some  obligingly  credulous  tradesman ;  a  priest  found 
— for,  be  it  premised,  our  hero  had  changed  so  much  of  his 
religion  as  he  had  to  change  in  the  reign  of  James  II.,  when 
Romanism  was  not  only  fashionable,  but  a  sure  road  to  fortune 
— and  the  mutually  satisfied  couple  swore  to  love,  honor,  and 
obey  one  another  till  death  them  should  part. 

The  next  morning,  however,  the  widow  left  the  gentleman's 
lodgings,  on  the  pretext  that  it  was  injudicious  for  her  friends 
to  know  of  their  union  at  present,  and  continued  to  visit  her 
sposo  and  sup  somewhat  amply  at  his  chambers  from  time  to 
time.  We  can  imagine  the  anxiety  Orlando  now  felt  for  a 
check -book  at  the  heiress's  bankers,  and  the  many  insinua- 
tions he  may  have  delicately  made,  touching  ways  and  means. 
We  can  fancy  the  artful  excuses  with  which  these  hints  were 
put  aside  by  his  attached  wife.  But  the  dupe  was  still  in 
happy  ignorance  of  the  trick  played  on  him,  and  for  a  time 
such  ignorance  was  bliss.  It  must  have  been  trying  to  him  to 
be  called  on  by  Mrs.  Villars  for  the  promised  douceur,  but  he 
consoled  himself  with  the  pleasures  of  hope. 

Unfortunately,  however,  he  had  formed  the  acquaintance  of 
a  woman  of  a  very  different  reputation  to  the  real  Mrs.  Deleau, 
and  the  intimacy  which  ensued  was  fatal  to  him. 

When  Charles  II.  was  wandering  abroad,  he  was  joined, 
among  others,  by  a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Palmer.  The  husband  was 
a  stanch  old  Romanist,  with  the  qualities  which  usually  ac- 
companied that  faith  in  those  days — little  respect  for  morality, 
and  a  good  deal  of  bigotry.  In  later  days  he  was  one  of  the 
victims  of  Titus  Oates,  but  escaped,  and  eventually  died  in 
Wales  in  1705,  after  having  been  James  II.'s  embassador  to 
Rome.  This,  in  a  few  words,  is  the  history  of  that  Roger 
Palmer,  afterward  Lord  Castlemaine,  who  sold  his  wife — not 


BAKBAKA   VILLIEKS,  LADY   CASTLEMAINE.  91 

at  Smithfield,  but  at  Whitehall — to  His  Majesty  King  Charles 
II.,  for  the  sum  of  one  peerage — an  Irish  one,  taken  on  consid- 
eration. 
Mrs.  Palmer  belonged  to  one  of  the  oldest  families  in  En- 

fland,  and  could  trace  her  descent  to  Pagan  de  Yilliers,  in  the 
ays  of  William  Rufus,  and  a  good  deal  farther  among  the 
nobles  of  Normandy.  She  was  the  daughter  of  William,  sec- 
ond Viscount  Grandison,  and  rejoiced  in  the  appropriate  name 
of  Barbara,  for  she  could  be  savage  occasionally.  She  was 
very  beautiful,  and  very  wicked,  and  soon  became  Charles's 
mistress.  On  the  Restoration  she  joined  the  king  in  England, 
and  when  the  poor  neglected  queen  came  over,  was  foisted 
upon  her  as  bedchamber-woman,  in  spite  of  all  the  objections 
of  that  ill-used  wife.  It  was  necessary  to  this  end  that  she 
should  be  the  wife  of  a  peer ;  and  her  low-minded  husband  act- 
ually accepted  the  title  of  Earl  of  Castlemaine,  well  knowing 
to  what  he  owed  it.  Pepys,  who  admired  Lady  Castlemaine 
more  than  any  woman  in  England,  describes  the  husband  and 
wife  meeting  at  Whitehall  with  a  cold  ceremonial  bow ;  yet 
the  husband  was  there,  using  the  court  power  which  his  own 
shame  procured  for  him.  A  quarrel  between  the  two,  strange- 
ly enough  on  the  score  of  religion,  her  ladyship  insisting  that 
her  child  should  be  christened  by  a  Protestant  clergyman, 
while  his  lordship  insisted  on  the  ceremony  being  performed 
by  a  Romish  priest,  brought  about  a  separation,  and  from  that 
time  Lady  Castlemaine,  lodged  in  Whitehall,  began  her  empire 
over  the  king  of  England.  That  man, "  who  never  said  a  fool- 
ish thing,  and  never  did  a  wise  one,"  was  the  slave  of  this  im- 
perious and  most  impudent  of  women.  She  forced  him  to  set- 
tle on  her  an  immense  fortune,  much  of  which  she  squandered 
at  the  basset-table,  often  staking  a  thousand  pounds  at  a  time, 
and  sometimes  losing  fifteen  thousand  pounds  a  night. 

Nor  did  her  wickedness  end  here.  We  have  some  pity  for 
one,  who,  like  La  Yalliere,  could  be  attracted  by  the  attentions 
of  a  handsome  fascinating  prince :  we  pity,  though  we  blame. 
But  Lady  Castlemaine  was  vicious  to  the  very  marrow :  not 
content  with  a  king's  favor,  she  courted  herself  the  young  gal- 
lant of  the  town.  Quarrels  ensued  between  Charles  and  his 
mistress,  in  which  the  latter  invariably  came  off  victorious, 
owing  to  her  indomitable  temper ;  and  the  scenes  recorded  by 
De  Grammont — when  she  threatened  to  burn  down  Whitehall, 
and  tear  her  children  in  pieces — are  too  disgraceful  for  inser- 
tion. She  forced  the  reprobate  monarch  to  consent  to  all  her 
extortionate  demands ;  rifled  the  nation's  pockets  as  well  as 
his  own ;  and  at  every  fresh  difference,  forced  Charles  to  give 
her  some  new  pension.  An  intrigue  with  Jermyn,  discovered 


92 

and  objected  to  by  the  king,  brought  on  a  fresh  and  more  se- 
rious difference,  which  was  only  patched  up  by  a  patent  of  the 
Duchy  of  Cleveland.  The  Duchess  of  Cleveland  was  even 
worse  than  the  Countess  of  Castlemaine.  Abandoned  in  time 
by  Charles,  and  detested  by  all  people  of  any  decent  feeling, 
she  consoled  herself  for  the  loss  of  a  real  king  by  taking  up 
with  a  stage  one.  Hart  and  Goodman,  the  actors,  were  suc- 
cessively her  cavalieri :  the  former  had  been  a  captain  in  the 
army ;  the  latter  a  student  at  Cambridge.  Both  were  men  of 
the  coarsest  minds  and  most  depraved  lives.  Goodman,  in 
after  years,  was  so  reduced  that,  finding,  as  Sheridan  advised 
his  son  to  do,  a  pair  of  pistols  handy,  a  horse  saddled,  and 
Hounslow  Heath  not  a  hundred  miles  distant,  he  took  to  the 
pleasant  and  profitable  pastime  of  which  Dick  Turpin  is  the  pa- 
tron saint.  He  was  all  but  hanged  by  his  daring  robberies,  but 
unfortunately  not  quite  so.  He  lived  to  suffer  such  indigence, 
that  he  and  another  rascal  had  but  one  under-garment  between 
them,  and  entered  into  a  compact  that  one  should  lie  in  bed 
while  the  other  wore  the  article  in  question.  Naturally  enough 
the  two  fell  out  in  time,  and  the  end  of  Goodman — sad  misno- 
mer— was  worse  than  his  beginning:  such  was  the  gallant 
whom  the  imperious  Duchess  of  Cleveland  vouchsafed  to  honor. 

The  life  of  the  once  beautiful  Barbara  Villiers  grew  daily 
more  and  more  depraved :  at  the  age  of  thirty  she  retired  to 
Paris,  shunned  and  disgraced.  After  numerous  intrigues, 
abroad  and  at  home,  she  put  the  crowning  point  to  her  follies 
by  falling  in  love  with  the  handsome  Fielding  when  she  her- 
self numbered  sixty-five  summers. 

Whether  the  Beau  still  thought  of  fortune,  or  whether  hav- 
ing once  tried  matrimony,  he  was  so  enchanted  with  it  as  to 
make  it  his  cacoethes,  does  not  appear :  the  legend  explains 
not  for  what  reason  he  married  the  antiquated  beauty  only 
three  weeks  after  he  had  been  united  to  the  supposed  widow. 
For  a  time  he  wavered  between  the  two,  but  that  time  was 
short:  the  widow  discovered  his  second  marriage,  claimed  him, 
and  in  so  doing  revealed  the  well-kept  secret  that  she  was 
not  a  widow ;  indeed,  not  even  the  relict  of  John  Deleau,  Esq., 
of  Whaddon,  but  a  wretched  adventurer  of  the  name  of  Mary 
Wadsworth,  who  had  shared  with  Mrs.  Villars  the  plunder  of 
the  trick.  The  Beau  tried  to  preserve  his  dignity,  and  throw 
over  his  duper,  but  in  vain.  The  first  wife  reported  the  state 
of  affairs  to  the  second ;  and  the  duchess,  who  had  been  shame- 
fully treated  by  Master  Fielding,  was  only  too  glad  of  an  op- 
portunity to  get  rid  of  him.  She  offered  Mary  Wadsworth  a 
pension  of  £100  a  year,  and  the  sum  of  £200  in  ready  money, 
to  prove  the  previous  marriage.  The  case  came  on,  and  Beau 


THE  LAST  DAYS  OF  FOPS  AND  BEAUX.          93 

Fielding  had  the  honor  of  playing  a  part  in  a  famous  state 
trial. 

With  his  usual  impudence  he  undertook  to  defend  himself 
at  the  Old  Bailey,  and  hatched  up  some  old  story  to  prove  that 
the  first  wife  was  married  at  the  tune  of  their  union  to  one 
Brady ;  but  the  plea  fell  to  the  ground,  and  the  fine  gentleman 
was  sentenced  to  be  burnt  in  the  hand.  His  interest  in  cer- 
tain quarters  saved  him  this  ignominious  punishment,  which 
would,  doubtless,  have  spoiled  a  limb  of  which  he  was  partic- 
ularly proud.  He  was  pardoned :  the  real  widow  married  a 
far  more  honorable  gentleman,  in  spite  of  the  unenviable  noto- 
riety she  had  acquired ;  the  sham  one  was  somehow  quieted, 
and  the  duchess  died  some  four  years  later,  the  more  peacefully 
for  being  rid  of  her  tyrannical  mate. 

Thus  ended  a  pretty  scandal  of  the  day,  in  which  all  the 
parties  were  so  disreputable  that  no  one  could  feel  any  sym- 
pathy for  a  single  one  of  them.  How  the  dupe  himself  ended 
is  not  known.  The  last  days  of  fops  and  beaux  are  never  glo- 
rious. Brummell  died  in  slovenly  penury;  Nash  in  contempt. 
Fielding  lapsed  into  the  dimmest  obscurity ;  and  as  far  as  evi- 
dence goes,  there  is  as  little  certainty  about  his  death  as  of  that 
of  the  Wandering  Jew.  Let  us  hope  that  he  is  not  still  alive : 
though  his  friends  seem  to  have  cared  little  whether  he  were 
so  or  not,  to  judge  from  a  couple  of  verses  written  by  one  of 
them: 

"If  Fielding  is  dead, 

And  rests  under  this  stone, 
Then  he  is  not  alive 

You  may  bet  two  to  one. 

"But  if  he's  alive, 

And  does  not  lie  there — 
Let  him  live  till  he's  hanged, 
For  which  no  man  will  care. " 


OP  CERTAIN  CLUBS  AND  CLUB-WITS  UNDER  ANNE. 

I  SUPPOSE  that,  long  before  the  building  of  Babel,  man  dis- 
covered that  he  was  an  associative  animal,  with  the  universal 
motto,  "E  union  c'est  la  force;"  and  that  association,  to  be 
of  any  use,  requires  talk.  A  history  of  celebrated  associa- 
tions, from  the  building  society  just  mentioned  down  to  the 
thousands  which  are  represented  by  an  office,  a  secretary,  and 
a  brass  plate,  in  the  present  day,  would  give  a  curious  scheme 
of  the  natural  tendencies  of  man  ;  while  the  story  of  their  fail- 
ures— and  how  many  have  not  failed,  sooner  or  later ! — would 
be  a  pretty  moral  lesson  to  your  anthropolaters  who  Babel- 
ize nowadays,  and  believe  there  is  nothing  which  a  company 
with  capital  can  not  achieve.  I  wonder  what  object  there  is, 
that  two  men  can  possibly  agree  in  desiring,  and  which  it 
takes  more  than  one  to  attain,  for  which  an  association  of 
some  kind  has  not  been  formed  at  some  time  or  other,  since 
first  the  swarthy  savage  learned  that  it  was  necessary  to  unite 
to  kill  the  lion  which  infested  the  neighborhood !  Alack  for 
human  nature !  I  fear  by  far  the  larger  proportion  of  the  ob- 
jects of  associations  would  be  found  rather  evil  than  good, 
and,  certes,  nearly  all  of  them  might  be  ranged  under  two 
heads,  according  as  the  passions  of  hate  or  desire  found  a  com- 
mon object  in  several  hearts.  Gain  on  the  one  hand — destruc- 
tion on  the  other — have  been  the  chief  motives  of  clubbing  in 
all  time. 

A  delightful  exception  is  to  be  found,  though — to  wit,  in  as- 
sociations for  the  purpose  of  talking.  I  do  not  refer  to  parlia- 
ments and  philosophical  academies,  but  to  those  companies 
which  have  been  formed  for  the  sole  purpose  of  mutual  enter- 
tainment by  interchange  of  thought. 

Now,  will  any  kind  reader  oblige  me  with  a  derivation  of 
the  word  "Club?"  I  doubt  if  it  is  easy  to  discover.  But  one 
thing  is  certain,  whatever  its  origin,  it  is,  in  its  present  sense, 
purely  English  in  idea  and  in  existence.  Dean  Trench  points 
this  out,  and,  noting  the  fact  that  no  other  nation  (he  might 
have  excepted  the  Chinese)  has  any  word  to  express  this  kind 
of  association,  he  has,  with  very  pardonable  national  pride,  but 
unpardonably  bad  logic,  inferred  that  the  English  are  the  most 
sociable  people  in  the  world.  The  contrary  is  true ;  nay,  was 
true,  even  in  the  days  of  Addison,  Swift,  Steele — even  in  the 


96  THE   ORIGIN   OF   CLUBS. COFFEE-HOUSES. 

days  of  Johnson,  Walpole,  Selwyn ;  ay,  at  all  time  since  we 
have  been  a  nation.  The  fact  is,  we  are  not  the  most  socia- 
ble, but  the  most  associative  race;  and  the  establishment  of 
clubs  is  a  proof  of  it.  We  can  not,  and  never  could,  talk  free- 
ly, comfortably,  and  generally,  without  a  company  for  talking. 
Conversation  has  always  been  with  us  as  much  a  business  as 
railroad-making,  or  what  not.  It  has  always  demanded  cer- 
tain accessories,  certain  condiments,  certain  stimulants  to  work 
it  up  to  the  proper  pitch.  "  We  all  know"  we  are  the  clever- 
est and  wittiest  people  under  the  sun ;  but  then  our  wit  has 
been  stereotyped.  France  has  no  "  Joe  Miller ;"  for  a  bon- 
mot  there,  however  good,  is  only  appreciated  historically. 
Our  wit  is  printed,  not  spoken :  our  best  wits  behind  an  ink- 
horn  have  sometimes  been  the  veriest  logs  in  society.  On  the 
Continent  clubs  were  not  called  for,  because  society  itself  was 
the  arena  of  conversation.  In  this  country,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  man  could  only  chat  when  at  his  ease ;  could  only  be  at  his 
ease  among  those  who  agreed  with  him  on  the  main  points  of 
religion  and  politics,  and  even  then  wanted  the  aid  of  a  bottle 
to  make  him  comfortable.  Our  want  of  sociability  was  the 
cause  of  our  clubbing,  and  therefore  the  word  "  club"  is  pure- 
ly English. 

This  was  never  so  much  the  case  as  after  the  Restoration. 
Religion  and  politics  never  ran  higher  than  when  a  monarch, 
who  is  said  to  have  died  a  papist  because  he  had  no  religion 
at  all  during  his  life,  was  brought  back  to  supplant  a  furious 
puritanical  Protectorate.  Then,  indeed,  it  was  difficult  for  men 
of  opposite  parties  to  meet  without  bickering ;  and  society 
demanded  separate  meeting-places  for  those  who  differed. 
The  origin  of  clubs  in  this  country  is  to  be  traced  to  two 
causes — the  vehemence  of  religion  and  political  partisanship, 
and  the  establishment  of  coffee-houses.  These  certainly  gave 
the  first  idea  of  clubbery.  The  taverns  which  preceded  them 
had  given  the  English  a  zest  for  public  life  in  a  small  way. 
"  The  Mermaid"  was,  virtuaUy,  a  club  of  wits  long  before  the 
first  real  club  was  opened,  and,  like  the  clubs  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  it  had  its  presiding  geniuses  in  Shakspeare  and 
Rare  Ben. 

The  coffee-houses  introduced  somewhat  more  refinement  and 
less  exclusiveness.  The  oldest  of  these  was  the  "  Grecian." 
"  One  Constantine,  a  Grecian,"  advertised  in  "  The  Intelligen- 
cer" of  January  23d,  1664-5,  "that  the  right  coffee  bery  or 
chocolate"  might  be  had  of  him  "  as  cheap  and  as  good  as  is 
any  where  to  be  had  for  money,"  and  soon  after  began  to  sell 
the  said  "  coffee  bery"  in  small  cups  at  his  own  establishment 
in  Devereux  Court,  Strand.  Some  two  years  later  we  have 


THE   OCTOBER   CLUB.  97 

news  of  "  Will's,"  the  most  famous,  perhaps,  of  the  coffee- 
houses. Here  Dryden  held  forthwith  pedantic  vanity ;  and 
here  was  laid  the  first  germ  of  that  critical  acumen  which  has 
since  become  a  distinguishing  feature  in  English  literature. 
Then,  in  the  City,  one  Garraway,  of  Exchange  Alley,  first  sold 
"  tea  in  leaf  and  drink,  made  according  to  the  directions  of  the 
most  knowing,  and  travelers  into  those  eastern  countries ;" 
and  thus  established  the  well-known  Garraway's,  whither,  in 
Defoe's  day,  "  foreign  banquiers"  and  even  ministers  resorted, 
to  drink  the  said  beverage.  "Robin's,"  "Jonathan's,"  and 
many  another,  were  all  opened  about  this  time,  and  the  rage 
for  coffee-house  life  became  general  throughout  the  country. 

In  these  places  the  company  was  of  course  of  all  classes  and 
colors ;  but,  as  the  conversation  was  general,  there  was  nat- 
urally at  first  a  good  deal  of  squabbling,  till,  for  the  sake  of 
peace  and  comfort,  a  man  chose  his  place  of  resort  according 
to  his  political  principles ;  and  a  little  later  there  were  regular 
Whig  and  Tory  coffee-houses.  Thus,  in  Anne's  day,  "  The 
Cocoanut,"  in  St.  James's  Street,  was  reserved  for  Jacobites, 
while  none  but  Whigs  frequented  "  The  St.  James's."  Still 
there  was  not  sufficient  exclusiveness ;  and  as  early  as  in  Charles 
II.'s  reign,  men  of  peculiar  opinions  began  to  appropriate  cer- 
tain coffee-houses  at  certain  hours,  and  to  exclude  from  them 
all  but  approved  members.  Hence  the  origin  of  clubs. 

The  October  Club  was  one  of  the  earliest,  being  composed 
of  some  hundred  and  fifty  rank  Tories,  chiefly  country  mem- 
bers of  Parliament.  They  met  at  the  "  Bell,"  in  King  Street, 
Westminster,  that  street  in  which  Spenser  starved,  and  Dry- 
den's  brother  kept  a  grocer's  shop.  A  portrait  of  Queen  Anne, 
by  Dahl,  hung  in  the  club-room.  This  and  the  Kit-kat,  the 
great  Whig  club,  were  chiefly  reserved  for  politics ;  but  the 
fashion  of  clubbing  having  once  come  in,  it  was  soon  followed 
by  people  of  all  fancies.  No  reader  of  the  "  Spectator"  can 
fail  to  remember  the  ridicule  to  which  this  was  turned  by  de- 
scriptions of  imaginary  clubs  for  which  the  qualifications  were 
absurd,  and  of  which  the  business,  on  meeting,  was  preposter- 
ous nonsense  of  some  kind.  The  idea  of  such  fraternities,  as 
the  Club  of  Fat  Men,  the  Ugly  Club,  the  Sheromp  Club,  the 
Everlasting  Club,  the  Sighing  Club,  the  Amorous  Club,  and 
others,  could  only  have  been  suggested  by  real  clubs  almost  as 
ridiculous.  The  names,  too,  were  almost  as  fantastical  as  those 
of  the  taverns  in  the  previous  century,  which  counted  "  The 
Devil,"  and  "  The  Heaven  and  Hell,"  among  their  numbers. 
Many  derived  their  titles  from  the  standing  dishes  preferred 
at  supper,  the  Beefsteak  and  the  Kit-kat  (a  sort  of  mutton-pie) 
for  instance. 

E 


98  THE   BEEFSTEAK    CLUB. 

The  Beefsteak  Club,  still  in  existence,  was  one  of  the  most 
famous  established  in  Anne's  reign.  It  had  at  that  time  less 
of  a  political  than  a  jovial  character.  Nothing  but  that  excel- 
lent British  fare,  from  which  it  took  its  name,  was,  at  first, 
served  at  the  supper-table.  It  was  an  assemblage  of  wits  of 
every  station,  and  very  jovial  were  they  supposed  to  be  when 
the  juicy  dish  had  been  discussed.  Early  in  the  century,  Est- 
court,  the  actor,  was  made  providore  to  this  club,  and  wore  a 
golden  gridiron  as  a  badge  of  office,  and  is  thus  alluded  to  in 
Dr.  King's  "Art  of  Cookery"  (1709)  :— 

"He  that  of  honor,  wit,  and  mirth  partakes, 
May  be  a  fit  companion  o'er  beefsteaks ; 
His  name  may  be  to  future  times  enrolled 
In  Estcourt's  book,  whose  gridiron's  framed  of  gold." 

Estcourt  was  one  of  the  best  mimics  of  the  day,  and  a  keen 
satirist  to  boot :  in  fact  he  seems  to  have  owed  much  of  his  suc- 
cess on  the  stage  to  his  power  of  imitation,  for  while  his  own 
manner  was  inferior,  he  could  at  pleasure  copy  exactly  that  of 
any  celebrated  actor.  He  would  be  a  player.  At  fifteen  he 
ran  away  from  home,  and  joining  a  strolling  company,  acted 
Roxana  in  woman's  clothes ;  his  friends  pursued  him,  and, 
changing  his  dress  for  that  of  a  girl  of  the  time,  he  tried  to 
escape  them,  but  in  vain.  The  histrionic  youth  was  captured, 
and  bound  apprentice  in  London  town ;  the  "  seven  long  years" 
of  which  did  not  cure  him  of  the  itch  for  acting.  But  he  was 
too  good  a  wit  for  the  stage,  and  amused  himself,  though  not 
always  his  audience,  by  interspersing  his  part  with  his  own  re- 
marks. The  great  took  him  by  the  hand,  and  old  Marlborough 
especially  patronized  him :  he  wrote  a  burlesque  of  the  Italian 
operas  then  beginning  to  be  in  vogue;  and  died  in  1712-13. 
Estcourt  was  not  the  only  actor  belonging  to  the  Beefsteak, 
nor  even  the  only  one  who  had  concealed  his  sex  under  emer- 
gency ;  Peg  Woffington,  who  had  made  as  good  a  boy  as  he 
had  done  a  girl,  was  afterward  a  member  of  this  club. 

In  later  years  the  beefsteak  was  cooked  in  a  room  at  the  top 
of  Covent  Garden  Theatre,  and  counted  many  a  celebrated 
wit  among  those  who  sat  around  its  cheery  dish.  Wilkes  the 
blasphemer,  Churchill,  and  Lord  Sandwich,  were  all  members 
of  it  at  the  same  time.  Of  the  last,  Walpole  gives  us  informa- 
tion in  1763  at  the  time  of  Wilkes'  duel  with  Martin  in  Hyde 
Park.  He  tells  us  that  at  the  Beefsteak  Club  Lord  Sandwich 
talked  so  profusely,  "  that  he  drove  harlequins  out  of  the  com- 
pany." To  the  honor  of  the  club  be  it  added,  that  his  lord- 
ship was  driven  out  after  the  harlequins,  and  finally  expelled : 
it  is  sincerely  to  be  hoped  that  Wilkes  was  sent  after  his  lord- 
ship. This  club  is  now  represented  by  one  held  behind  the 


THE   KIT-KAT   CLUB.  99 

Lyceum,  with  the  thoroughly  British  motto,  "  Beef  and  Lib- 
erty :"  the  name  was  happily  chosen,  and  therefore  imitated. 
In  the  reign  of  George  II.  we  meet  with  a  "  Rump-steak,  or 
Liberty  Club ;"  and  somehow  steaks  and  liberty  seem  to  be 
the  two  ideas  most  intimately  associated  in  the  Britannic  mind. 
Can  any  one  explain  it  ? 

Other  clubs  there  were  under  Anne — political,  critical,  and 
hilarious — but  the  palm  is  undoubtedly  carried  oif  by  the  glo- 
rious Kit-kat. 

It  is  not  every  eating-house  that  is  immortalized  by  a  Pope, 
though  Tennyson  has  sung  "  The  Cock"  with  its  "  plump  head- 
waiter,"  who,  by  the  way,  was  mightily  offended  by  the  Lau- 
reate's verses — or  pretended  to  be  so — and  thought  it  "  a  great 
liberty  of  Mr. ,  Mr. ,  what  is  his  name  ?  to  put  re- 
spectable private  characters  into  his  books."  Pope,  or  some 
say  Arbuthnot,  explained  the  etymology  of  this  club's  extra- 
ordinary title : — 

"  Whence  deathless  Kit-kat  took  its  name, 

Few  critics  can  unriddle ; 
Some  say  from  pastry-cook  it  came, 
And  some  from  Cat  and  Fiddle. 

'*  From  no  trim  beaux  its  name  it  boasts, 

Gray  statesmen  or  green  wits ; 
But  from  the  pell-mell  pack  of  toasts 
Of  old  cats  and  young  kits." 

Probably  enough  the  title  was  hit  on  at  hap-hazard,  and  re- 
tained because  it  was  singular,  but  as  it  has  given  a  poet  a 
theme,  and  a  painter  a  name  for  pictures  of  a  peculiar  size,  its 
etymology  has  become  important.  Some  say  that  the  pastry- 
cook in  Shire  Lane,  at  whose  house  it  was  held,  was  named 
Christopher  Katt.  Some  one  or  other  was  certainly  celebra- 
ted for  the  manufacture  of  that  forgotten  delicacy,  a  mutton- 
pie,  which  acquired  the  name  of  a  Kit-kat. 

"A  Kit-kat  is  a  supper  for  a  lord," 

says  a  comedy  of  1700,  and  certes  it  afforded  at  this  club  even- 
ing nourishment  for  many  a  celebrated  noble  profligate  of  the 
day.  The  supposed  sign  of  the  Cat  and  Fiddle  (Kitt),  gave 
another  solution,  but  after  all,  Pope's  may  be  satisfactorily  re- 
ceived. 

The  Kit-kat  was,  par  excellence,  the  Whig  Club  of  Queen 
Anne's  time :  it  was  established  at  the  beginning  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  and  was  then  composed  of  thirty-nine  members, 
among  whom  were  the  Dukes  of  Marlborough,  Devonshire, 
Grafton,  Richmond,  and  Somerset.  In  later  days,  it  numbered 
the  greatest  wits  of  the  age,  of  whom  anon. 

This  club  was  celebrated  more  than  any  for  its  toasts. 


100  THE  ROMANCE  OF  THE  BOWL. 

Now,  if  men  must  drink — and  sure  the  vine  was  given  us 
for  use,  I  do  not  say  for  abuse — they  had  better  make  it  an 
occasion  of  friendly  intercourse ;  nothing  can  be  more  degraded 
than  the  solitary  sanctimonious  toping  in  which  certain  of  our 
Northern  brethren  are  known  to  indulge.  They  had  better 
give  to  the  quaffing  of  that  rich  gift,  sent  to  be  a  medicine  for 
the  mind,  to  raise  us  above  the  perpetual  contemplation  of 
worldly  ills,  as  much  of  romance  and  elegance  as  possible.  It 
is  the  opener  of  the  heart,  the  awakener  of  nobler  feelings  of 
generosity  and  love,  the  banisher  of  all  that  is  narrow,  and 
sordid,  and  selfish;  the  herald  of  all  that  is  exalted  in  man. 
No  wonder  that  the  Greeks  made  a  god  of  Bacchus,  that  the 
Hindoo  worshiped  the  mellow  Soma,  and  that  there  has  been 
scarce  a  poet  who  has  not  sung  its  praise.  There  was  some 
beauty  in  the  feasts  of  the  Greeks,  when  the  goblet  was  really 
wreathed  with  flowers ;  and  even  the  German  student,  dirty 
and  drunken  as  he  may  be,  removes  half  the  stain  from  his 
orgies  with  the  rich  harmony  of  his  songs,  and  the  hearty 
good-fellowship  of  his  toasts.  We  drink  still,  perhaps  we 
shall  always  drink  till  the  end  of  time,  but  all  the  romance  of 
the  bowl  is  gone ;  the  last  trace  of  its  beauty  went  with  the 
frigid  abandonment  of  the  toast. 

There  was  some  excuse  for  wine  when  it  brought  out  that 
now  forgotten  expression  of  good-will.  Many  a  feud  was  rec- 
onciled in  the  clinking  of  glasses ;  just  as  many  another  was 
begun  when  the  cup  was  drained  too  deeply.  The  first  quar- 
ter of  the  last  century  saw  the  end  of  all  the  social  glories  of 
the  wassail  in  this  country,  and  though  men  drank  as  much  fifty 
years  later,  all  its  poetry  and  romance  had  then  disappeared. 

It  was  still,  however,  the  custom  at  that  period  to  call  on 
the  name  of  some  fair  maiden,  and  sing  her  praises  over  the 
cup  as  it  passed.  It  was  a  point  of  honor  for  all  the  company 
to  join  the  health.  Some  beauties  became  celebrated  for  the 
number  of  their  toasts ;  some  even  standing  toasts  among  cer- 
tain sets.  In  the  Kit-kat  Club  the  custom  was  carried  out  by 
rule,  and  every  member  was  compelled  to  name  a  beauty, 
whose  claims  to  the  honor  were  then  discussed,  and  if  her 
name  was  approved,  a  separate  bowl  was  consecrated  to  her, 
and  verses  to  her  honor  engraved  on  it.  Some  of  the  most 
celebrated  toasts  had  even  their  portraits  hung  in  the  club- 
room,  and  it  was  no  slight  distinction  to  be  the  favorite  of  the 
Kit-kat.  When  only  eight  years  old,  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu  enjoyed  this  privilege.  Her  father,  the  Lord  Dor- 
chester, afterward  Evelyn,  Duke  of  Kingston,  in  a  fit  of  ca- 
price, proposed  "  the  pretty  little  child"  as  his  toast.  The 
other  members,  who  had  never  seen  her,  objected ;  the  Peer 


THE    MEMBERS    OF   THE   KIT-KAT.  101 

sent  for  her,  and  there  could  no  longer  be  any  question.  The 
forward  little  girl  was  handed  from  knee  to  knee,  petted,  prob- 
ably, by  Addison,  Congreve,  Vanbrugh,  Garth,  and  many  an- 
other famous  wit.  Another  celebrated  toast  of  the  Kit-kat, 
mentioned  by  Walpole,  was  Lady  Molyneux,  who,  he  says,  died 
smoking  a  pipe. 

This  club  was  no  less  celebrated  for  its  portraits  than  for 
the  ladies  it  honored.  They,  the  portraits,  were  all  painted 
by  Kneller,  and  all  of  one  size,  which  thence  got  the  name  of 
Kit-kat ;  they  were  hung  round  the  club-room.  •  Jacob  Ton- 
son,  the  publisher,  was  secretary  to  the  club. 

Defoe  tells  us  the  Kit-kat  held  the  first  rank  among  the 
clubs  of  the  early  part  of  the  last  century,  and  certainly  the 
names  of  its  members  comprise  as  many  wits  as  we  could  ex- 
pect to  find  collected  in  one  society. 

Addison  must  have  been  past  fifty  when  he  became  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Kit-kat.  His  "  Cato"  had  won  him  the  general  ap- 
plause of  the  Whig  party,  who  could  not  allow  so  fine  a  writer 
to  slip  from  among  them.  He  had  long,  too,  played  the  court- 
ier, and  was  "  quite  a  gentleman."  A  place  among  the  exclu- 
sives  of  the  Kit-kat  was  only  the  just  reward  of  such  attain- 
ments, and  he  had  it.  I  shall  not  be  asked  to  give  a  notice  of 
a  man  so  universally  known,  and  one  who  ranks  rather  with 
the  humorists  than  the  wits.  It  will  suffice  to  say,  that  it  was 
not  till  after  the  publication  of  the  "Spectator,"  and  some  time 
after,  that  he  joined  our  society. 

Congreve  I  have  chosen  out  of  this  set  for  a  separate  life, 
for  this  man  happens  to  present  a  very  average  sample  of  all 
their  peculiarities.  Congreve  was  a  literary  man,  a  poet,  f 
wit,  a  beau,  and — what  unhappily  is  quite  as  much  to  the  pur. 
pose — a  profligate.  The  only  point  he,  therefore,  wanted  in 
common  with  most  of  the  members,  was  a  title ;  but  few  of 
the  titled  members  combined  as  many  good  and  bad  qualities 
of  the  Kit-kat  kind  as  did  William  Congreve. 

Another  dramatist,  whose  name  seems  to  be  inseparable 
from  Congreve's,  was  that  mixture  of  bad  and  good  taste — 
Vanbrugh.  This  author  of  "  The  Relapse,"  the  most  licentious 
play  ever  acted,  and  builder  of  Blenheim,  the  ugliest  house 
ever  erected,  was  a  man  of  good  family,  and  Walpole  counts 
him  among  those  who  "  wrote  genteel  comedy,  because  they 
lived  in  the  best  company."  We  doubt  the  logic  of  this ;  but 
if  it  hold,  how  is  it  that  Van  wrote  plays  which  the  best  com- 
pany, even  of  that  age,  condemned,  and  neither  good  nor  bad 
company  can  read  in  the  present  day  without  being  shocked  ? 
If  the  conversation  of  the  Kit-kat  was  any  thing  like  that  in 
this  member's  comedies,  it  must  have  been  highly  edifying. 


102  A   GOOD   WIT,  AND   A   BAD   ARCHITECT. 

However,  I  have  no  doubt  Mr.  Van  passed  for  a  gentleman, 
whatever  his  conversation,  and  he  was  certainly  a  wit,  and  ap- 
parently somewhat  less  licentious  in  his  morals  than  the  rest. 
Yet  what  Pope  said  of  his  literature  may  be  said,  too,  of  some 
acts  of  his  life : 

"  How  Van  wants  grace,  who  never  wanted  wit." 

And  his  quarrel  with  "  Queen  Sarah"  of  Marlborough,  though 
the  duchess  was  by  no  means  the  most  agreeable  woman  in 
the  world  to  deal  with,  is  not  much  to  Van's  honor.  When 
the  nation  voted  half  a  million  to  build  that  hideous  mass  of 
stone,  the  irregular  and  unsightly  piling  ofwhich  caused  Wai- 
pole  to  say  that  the  architect  "  had  emptied  quarries,  rather 
than  built  houses,"  and  Dr.  Evans  to  write  this  epitaph  for  the 
builder — 

"Lie  heavy  on  him,  Earth,  for  he 
Laid  many  a  heavy  load  on  thee," 

Sarah  haggled  over  "  seven-pence  halfpenny  a  bushel :"  Van 
retorted  by  calling  her  "  stupid  and  troublesome,"  and  "  that 
wicked  woman  of  Marlborough,"  and  after  the  duke's  death, 
wrote  that  the  duke  had  left  her  "  twelve  thousand  pounds 
a  year  to  keep  herself  clean  and  go  to  law."  Whether  she 
employed  any  portion  of  it  on  the  former  object  we  do  not 
pretend  to  say,  but  she  certainly  spent  as  much  as  a  miser 
could  on  litigation,  Van  himself  being  one  of  the  unfortunates 
she  attacked  in  this  way. 

The  events  of  Vanbrugh's  life  were  varied.  He  began  life 
in  the  army,  but  in  1697  gave  the  stage  "The  Relapse."  It 
was  sufficiently  successful  to  induce  him  to  follow  it  up  with 
the  "  Provoked  Wife,"  one  of  the  wittiest  pieces  produced  in 
those  days.  Charles,  Earl  of  Carlisle,  Deputy  Earl  Marshal,  for 
whom  he  built  Castle  Howard,  made  him  Clarencieux  King-at- 
arms  in  1704,  and  he  was  knighted  by  George  I.,  9th  Septem- 
ber, 1714.  In  1705  he  joined  Congreve  in  the  management  of 
the  Haymarket,  which  he  himself  built.  George  I.  made  him 
Comptroller-general  of  the  royal  works.  He  had  even  an  ex- 
perience of  the  Bastile,  where  he  was  confined  for  sketching 
fortifications  in  France.  He  died  in  1726,  with  the  reputation 
of  a  good  wit,  and  a  bad  architect.  His  conversation  was,  cer- 
tainly, as  light  as  his  buildings  were  heavy. 

Another  member,  almost  as  well  known  in  his  day,  was  Sir 
Samuel  Garth,  the  physician,  "  well-natured  Garth,"  as  Pope 
called  him.  He  won  his  fame  by  a  satire  on  the  apothecaries 
in  the  shape  of  a  poem  called  "  The  Dispensary."  When  de- 
livering the  funeral  oration  over  Dryden's  body,  which  had 
been  so  long  unburied  that  its  odor  began  to  be  disagreeable, 


"  WELL-NATURED   GAKTH."  103 

he  mounted  a  tub,  the  top  of  which  fell  through  and  left  the 
doctor  in  rather  an  awkward  position.  He  gained  admission 
to  the  Kit-kat  in  consequence  of  a  vehement  eulogy  on  King 
William,  which  he  had  introduced  into  his  Harveian  oration, 
in  1697.*  It  was  Garth,  too,  who  extemporized  most  of  the 
verses  which  were  inscribed  on  the  toasting-glasses  of  their 
club,  so  that  he  may,  par  excellence,  be  considered  the  Kit-kat 
poet.  He  was  the  physician  and  friend  of  Marlborough,  with 
whose  sword  he  was  knighted  by  George  L,  who  made  him 
his  physician  in  ordinary.  Garth  was  a  very  jovial  man,  and, 
some  say,  not  a  very  religious  one.  Pope  said  he  was  as  good 
a  Christian  as  ever  lived,  "  without  knowing  it."  He  certainly 
had  no  affectation  of  piety,  and  if  charitable  and  good-natured 
acts  could  take  a  man  to  heaven,  he  deserved  to  go  there.  He 
had  his  doubts  about  faith,  and  is  said  to  have  died  a  Roman- 
ist. This  he  did  in  1719,  and  the  poor  and  the  Kit-kat  must 
both  have  felt  his  loss.  He  was  perhaps  more  of  a  wit  thai) 
a  poet,  although  he  has  bee~n  classed  at  times  with  Gray  and 
Prior ;  he  can  scarcely  take  the  same  rank  as  other  verse-mak- 
ing doctors,  such  as  Akenside,  Darwin,  and  Armstrong.  H< 
seems  to  have  been  &n  active,  healthy  man — perhaps  too  mucl 
so  for  a  poet — for  it  is  on  record  that  he  ran  a  match  in  the 
Mall  with  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  and  beat  him.  He  was  fond, 
too,  of  a  hard  frost,  and  had  a  regular  speech  to  introduce  on 
that  subject :  "  Yes,  sir,  'fore  Gad,  very  fine  weather,  sir — very 
wholesome  weather,  sir — kills  trees,  sir — very  good  for  man, 
sir." 

Old  Marlborough  had  another  intimate  friend  at  the  club, 
who  was  probably  one  of  its  earliest  members.  This  was  Ar- 
thur Maynwaring,  a  poet,  too,  in  a  way,  but  more  celebrated 
at  this  time  for  his  liaison  with  Mrs.  Oldfield,  the  famous  but 
disreputable  actress,  with  whom  he  fell  in  love  when  he  was 
forty  years  old,  and  whom  he  instructed  in  the  niceties  of  elo- 
cution, making  her  rehearse  her  parts  to  him  in  private.  Mayn- 
waring wa%  born  in  1668,  educated  at  Oxford,  and  destined  to 
the  bar,  for  which  he  studied.  He  began  life  as  a  vehement 
Jacobite,  and  even  supported  that  party  in  sundry  pieces ;  but 
like  some  others,  he  was  easily  converted,  when,  on  coming  to 
town,  he  found  it  more  fashionable  to  be  a  Whig.  He  held 
two  or  three  posts  under  the  Government,  whose  cause  he  now 
espoused :  had  the  honor  of  the  dedication  of  "  The  Tatler"  to 
him  by  Steele,  and  died  suddenly  in  1712.  He  divided  his  for- 
tune between  his  sister  and  his  mistress,  Mrs.  Oldfield,  and  his 
son  by  the  latter.  Mrs.  Oldfield  must  have  grown  rich  in  her 
sinful  career,  for  she  could  afford,  when  ill,  to  refuse  to  take 
*  The  Kit-kat  club  was  not  founded  till  1703. 


104  THE   POETS    OF  THE   KIT-KAT. 

her  salary  from  the  theatre,  though  entitled  to  it.  She  acted 
best  in  Vanbrugh's  "Provoked  Husband,"  so  well,  in  fact,  that 
the  manager  gave  her  an  extra  fifty  pounds  by  way  of  acknowl- 
edgment. 

Poetizing  seems  to  have  been  as  much  a  polite  accomplish- 
ment of  that  age  as  letter-writing  was  of  a  later,  and  a  smat- 
tering of  science  is  of  the  present  day.  Gentlemen  tried  to  be 
poets,  and  poets  gentlemen.  The  consequence  was,  that  both 
made  fools  of  themselves.  Among  the  poetasters  who  belong- 
ed to  the  Kit-kat,  we  must  mention  Walsh,  a  country  gentle- 
man, member  of  Parliament,  and  very  tolerable  scholar.  He 
dabbled  in  odes,  elegies,  epitaphs,  and  all  that  small  fry  of  the 
muse  which  was  then  so  plentiful.  He  wrote  critical  essays  on 
Virgil,  in  which  he  tried  to  make  out  that  the  shepherds  in  the 
days  of  the  Roman  poet  were  very  well-bred  gentlemen  of  good 
education !  He  was  a  devoted  admirer  and  friend  of  Dryden, 
and  he  encouraged  Pope  in  his  earlier  career  so  kindly  that  the 
little  viper  actually  praised  him !  Walsh  died  somewhere  about 
1709  in  middle  life. 

We  have  not  nearly  done  with  the  poets  of  the  Kit-kat.  A 
still  smaller  one  than  Walsh  was  Stepney,  who,  like  Garth,  had 
begun  life  as  a  violent  Tory  and  turned  coat  when  he  found  his 
interest  lay  the  other  way.  He  was  well  repaid,  for  from  1692 
to  1706  he  was  sent  on  no  less  than  eight  diplomatic  missions, 
chiefly  to  German  courts.  He  owed  this  preferment  to  the 
good  luck  of  having  been  a  school-fellow  of  Charles  Montagu, 
afterward  Earl  of  Halifax.  He  died  about  1707,  and  had  as 

frand  a  monument  and  epitaph  in  Westminster  Abbey  as  if 
e  had  been  a  Milton  or  Dryden. 

When  you  meet  a  dog  trotting  along  the  road,  you  natural- 
ly expect  that  his  master  is  not  far  off.  In  the  same  way,  where 
you  find  a  poet,  still  more  a  poetaster,  there  you  may  feel  cer- 
tain you  will  light  upon  a  patron.  The  Kit-kat  was  made  up 
of  Maecenas's  and  their  humble  servants ;  and  in  the  same  club 
with  Addison,  Congreve,  Vanbrugh,  and  the  minor  poets,  we 
are  not  at  all  surprised  to  find  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  the  Duke 
of  Somerset,  Halifax,  and  Somers. 

Halifax  was,  par  excellence,  the  Maecenas  of  his  day,  and  Pope 
described  him  admirably  in  the  character  of  Bufo : 

"  Proud  as  Apollo,  on  his  forked  hill, 
Sat  full-blown  Bufo,  puif  d  by  every  quill ; 
Fed  with  soft  dedication  all  day  long, 
Horace  and  he  went  hand  in  hand  in  song." 

The  dedications  poured  in  thickly.  Steele,  Tickell,  Philips, 
Smith,  and  a  crowd  of  lesser  lights,  raised  my  lord  each  one  on 
a  higher  pinnacle ;  and  in  return  the  powerful  minister  was  not 


CHANCELLOR   SOMERS.  105 

forgetful  of  the  douceur  which  well-tuned  verses  were  accus- 
tomed to  receive.  He  himself  had  tried  to  be  a  poet,  and  in 
1703  wrote  verses  for  the  toasting-cups  of  the  Kit-kat.  His 
lines  to  a  Dowager  Countess  of  ****,  are  good  enough  to  make 
us  surprised  that  he  never  wrote  any  better.  Take  a  speci- 
men: 

"Fair  Queen  of  Fop-land  in  her  royal  style ; 

Fop-land  the  greatest  part  of  this  great  isle ! 

Nature  did  ne'er  so  equally  divide 

A  female  heart  'twixt  piety  and  pride : 

Her  waiting-maids  prevent  the  peep  of  day, 

And  all  in  order  at  her  toilet  lay 

Prayer-books,  patch-boxes,  sermon-notes,  and  paint, 

At  once  t'  improve  the  sinner  and  the  saint." 

A  Maecenas  who  paid  for  his  dedications  was  sure  to  be  well 
spoken  of,  and  Halifax  has  been  made  out  a  wit  and  a  poet, 
as  well  as  a  clever  statesman.  He  reminds  me  of  a  young 
Oxford  man  whom  I  knew  in  my  college-days,  and  who  never 
walked  down  the  street  without  half  a  dozen  loafers  touching 
their  hats  to  him.  It  was  affirmed  that  he  distributed  sundry 
crowns  among  them  in  consideration  of  this  honor ;  and  cer- 
tainly, when  he  left  the  university,  I  never  spoke  of  him  to  any 
of  that  order  of  nondescripts  who  infest  a  university  town  with- 
out being  assured  that  Mr.  A was  "  one  of  the  right  sort 

— a  rale  gen'Pman  he  was,  and  no  mistake."  Halifax  got  his 
earldom  and  the  garter  from  George  I.,  and  died,  after  enjoy- 
ing them  less  than  a  year,  in  1715. 

Chancellor  Somers,  with  whom  Halifax  was  associated  in 
the  impeachment  case  in  1701,  was  a  far  better  man  in  every 
respect.  His  was  probably  the  purest  character  among  those 
of  all  the  members  of  the  Kit-kat.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Wor- 
cester attorney,  and  born  in  1652.  He  was  educated  at  Trin- 
ity, Oxford,  and  rose  purely  by  merit,  distinguishing  himself 
at  the  bar  and  on  the  bench,  unwearied  in  his  application  to 
business,  and  an  exact  and  upright  judge.  At  school  he  was 
a  terrible  good  boy,  keeping  to  his  book  in  play-hours. 
Throughout  life  his  habits  were  simple  and  regular,  and  his 
character  unblemished.  He  slept  but  little,  and  in  later  years 
had  a  reader  to  attend  him  at  waking.  With  such  habits  he 
can  scarcely  have  been  a  constant  attender  at  the  club ;  and 
as  he  died  a  bachelor,  it  would  be  curious  to  learn  what  ladies 
he  selected  for  his  toasts.  In  his  later  years  his  mind  weak- 
ened, and  he  died  in  1716  of  apoplexy.  Walpole  calls  him 
"  one  of  those  divine  men  who,  like  a  chapel  in  a  palace,  re- 
main unprofaned,  while  all  the  rest  is  tyranny,  corruption,  and 
folly." 

A  huge  stout  figure  rolls  in  now  to  join  the  toasters  in 
E2 


106  CHARLES  SACKVILLE,  LOED   DORSET. 

Shire  Lane.  In  the  puffy,  once  handsome  face,  there  are  signs 
of  age,  for  its  owner  is  past  sixty ;  yet  he  is  dressed  in  superb 
fashion ;  and  in  an  hour  or  so,  when  the  bottle  has  been  dili- 
gently circulated,  his  wit  will  be  brighter  and  keener  than  that 
of  any  young  man  present.  I  do  not  say  it  will  be  repeatable,  for 
the  talker  belongs  to  a  past  age,  even  coarser  than  that  of  the 
Kit-kat.  He  is  Charles  Sackville,*  famous  as  a  companion  of 
the  merriest  and  most  disreputable  of  the  Stuarts,  famous — or, 
rather,  infamous — for  his  mistress,  Nell  Gwynn,  famous  for  his 
verses,  for  his  patronage  of  poets,  and  for  his  wild  frolics  in 
early  life,  when  Lord  Buckhurst.  Rochester  called  him 

"The  best  good  man  with  the  worst-natured  muse ;" 
and  Pope  says  he  was 

"The  scourge  of  pride,  though  sanctified  or  great, 
Of  fops  in  learning  and  of  knaves  in  state ;" 

Our  sailors  still  sing  the  ballad  which  he  is  said  to  have  writ- 
ten on  the  eve  of  the  naval  engagement  between  the  Duke  of 
York  and  Admiral  Opdam,  which  begins — 

"  To  all  you  ladies  now  on  land 
We  men  at  sea  indite." 

With  a  fine  classical  taste  and  a  courageous  spirit,  he  had 
in  early  days  been  guilty  of  as  much  iniquity  as  any  of  Charles's 
profligate  court.  He  was  one  of  a  band  of  young  libertines 
who  robbed  and  murdered  a  poor  tanner  on  the  high-road,  and 
were  acquitted,  less  on  account  of  the  poor  excuse  they  dished 
up  for  this  act  than  of  their  rank  and  fashion.  Such  fine 
gentlemen  could  not  be  hanged  for  the  sake  of  a  mere  work- 
man in  those  days — no  !  no !  Yet  he  does  not  seem  to  have 
repented  of  this  transaction,  for  soon  after  he  was  engaged 
with  Sedley  and  Ogle  in  a  series  of  most  indecent  acts  at  the 
Cock  Tavern  in  Bow  Street,  where  Sedley,  in  "  birthday  at- 
tire," made  a  blasphemous  oration  from  the  balcony  of  the 
house.  In  later  years  he  was  the  pride  of  the  poets :  Dryden 
and  Prior,  Wycherley,  Hudibras,  and  Rymer,  were  all  encour- 
aged by  him,  and  repaid  him  with  praises.  Pope  and  Dr. 
King  were  no  less  bountiful  in  their  eulogies  of  the  Maecenas. 
His  conversation  was  so  much  appreciated  that  gloomy  Wil- 
liam III.  chose  him  as  his  companion,  as  merry  Charles  had 
done  before.  The  famous  Irish  ballad,  which  my  Uncle  Toby 
was  always  humming,  "  Lillibullero  bullen-a-lah,"  but  which 
Percy  attributes  to  the  Marquis  of  Wharton,  another  mem- 
ber of  the  Kit-kat,  was  said  to  have  been  written  by  Buck- 
hurst.  He  retained  his  wit  to  the  last ;  and  Congreve,  who 
visited  him  when  he  was  dying,  said,  "  Faith,  he  stutters  more 
*  For  some  notice  of  Lord  Dorset,  see  p.  72. 


LESS    CELEBBATED    WITS.  107 

wit  than  other  people  have  in  their  best  health."  He  died  at 
Bath  in  1706. 

Buckhurst  does  not  complete  the  list  of  conspicuous  mem- 
bers of  this  club,  but  the  remainder  were  less  celebrated  for 
their  wit.  There  was  the  Duke  of  Kingston,  the  father  of 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu ;  Granville,  who  imitated  Wal- 
ler, and  attempted  to  make  his  "Myra"  as  celebrated  as  the 
court-poet's  Saccharissa,  who,  by  the  way,  was  the  mother  of 
the  Earl  of  Sunderland ;  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  whom  Wai- 
pole  calls  "  a  patriot  among  the  men,  a  gallant  among  the  la- 
dies," and  who  founded  Chatsworth ;  and  other  noblemen, 
chiefly  belonging  to  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  all  devoted  to  William  III.,  though  they  had  been  bred  at 
the  courts  of  Charles  and  James. 

With  such  an  array  of  wits,  poets,  statesmen,  and  gallants, 
it  can  easily  be  believed  that  to  be  the  toast  of  the  Kit-kat  was 
no  slight  honor ;  to  be  a  member  of  it  a  still  greater  one ;  and 
to  be  one  of  its  most  distinguished,  as  Congreve  was,  the 
greatest.  Let  us  now  see  what  title  this  conceited  beau  and 
poet  had  to  that  position. 


WILLIAM  CONGREVE, 

WHEN  "  Queen  Sarah"  of  Marlborough  read  the  silly  epi- 
taph which  Henrietta,  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  had  written 
and  had  engraved  on  the  monument  she  set  up  to  Congreve, 
she  said,  with  one  of  the  true  Blenheim  sneers,  "  I  know  not 
what  happiness  she  might  have  in  his  company,  but  I  am  sure 
it  was  no  honor"  alluding  to  her  daughter's  eulogistic  phrases. 

Queen  Sarah  was  right,  as  she  often  was  when  condemna- 
tion was  called  for;  and  however  amusing  a  companion  the 
dramatist  may  have  been,  he  was  not  a  man  to  respect,  for  he 
had  not  only  the  common  vices  of  his  age,  but  added  to  them 
a  foppish  vanity,  toadyism,  and  fine-gentlemanism  (to  coin  a 
most  necessary  word),  which  we  scarcely  expect  to  meet  with 
in  a  man  who  sets  up  for  a  satirist. 

It  is  the  fate  of  greatness  to  have  falsehoods  told  of  it,  and 
of  nothing  in  connection  with  it  more  so  than  of  its  origin. 
If  the  converse  be  true,  Congreve  ought  to  have  been  a  great 
man,  for  the  place  and  time  of  his  birth  are  both  subjects  of 
dispute.  Oh,  happy  Gifford !  or  happy  Croker !  why  did  you 
not — perhaps  you  did — go  to  work  to  set  the  world  right  on 
this  matter — you,  to  whom  a  date  discovered  is  the  highest 
palm  (no  pun  intended,  I  assure  you)  of  glory,  and  who  would 
rather  Shakspeare  had  never  written  "  Hamlet,"  or  Homer  the 
"  Iliad,"  than  that  some  miserable  little  forgotten  scrap  which 
decided  a  year  or  a  place  should  have  been  consigned  to  flames 
before  it  fell  into  your  hands  ?  Why  did  you  not  bring  the 
thunder  of  your  abuse  and  the  pop-gunnery  of  your  satire  to 
bear  upon  the  question,  "  How,  when,  and  where  was  William 
Congreve  born  ?" 

It  was  Lady  Morgan,  I  think,  who  first  "  saw  the  light" 
(that  is,  if  she  was  born  in  the  daytime)  in  the  Irish  Channel. 
If  it  had  been  only  some  one  more  celebrated,  we  should  have 
had  by  this  time  a  series  of  philosophical,  geographical,  and 
ethnological  pamphlets  to  prove  that  she  was  English  or  Irish, 
according  to  the  fancies  or  prejudices  of  the  writers.  It  was 
certainly  a  very  Irish  thing  to  do,  which  is  one  argument  for 
the  Milesians,  and  again  it  was  done  in  the  Irish  Channel, 
which  is  another  and  a  stronger  one ;  and  altogether  we  are 
not  inclined  to  go  into  forty-five  pages  of  recondite  facts  and 
fine-drawn  arguments,  mingled  with  the  most  vehement  abuse 


110  WHEN   AND  WHEKE   CONGEE VE   WAS   BOEN. 

of  any  body  who  ever  before  wrote  on  the  subject,  to  prove 
that  this  country  had  the  honor  of  producing  her  ladyship — 
the  Wild  Irish  Girl.  We  freely  give  her  up  to  the  sister  isl- 
and. But  not  so  William  Congreve,  though  we  are  equally 
indifferent  to  the  honor  in  his  case. 

The  one  party,  then,  assert  that  he  was  born  in  this  country, 
the  other  that  he  breathed  his  first  air  in  the  Emerald  Isle. 
Whichever  be  the  true  state  of  the  case,  we,  as  Englishmen, 
prefer  to  agree  in  the  commonly  received  opinion  that  he  came 
into  this  wicked  world  at  the  village  of  Bardsea  or  Bardsey, 
not  far  from  Leeds  in  the  county  of  York.  Let  the  Bardsey- 
ans  immediately  erect  a  statue  to  his  honor,  if  they  have  been 
remiss  enough  to  neglect  him  heretofore. 

But  our  difficulties  are  not  ended,  for  there  is  a  similar 
doubt  about  the  year  of  his  birth.  His  earliest  biographer  as- 
sures us  he  was  born  in  1672,  and  others  that  he  was  baptized 
three  years  before,  in  1669.  Such  a  proceeding  might  well  be 
taken  as  proof  of  his  Hibernian  extraction,  and  accordingly  we 
find  Malone  supporting  the  earlier  date,  producing,  of  course, 
a  certificate  of  baptism  to  support  himself;  and  as  we  have  a 
very  great  respect  for  his  authority,  we  beg  also  to  support 
Mr.  Malone. 

This  being  settled,  we  have  to  examine  who  were  his  par- 
ents ;  and  this  is  satisfactorily  answered  by  his  earliest  biog- 
rapher, who  informs  us  that  he  was  of  a  very  ancient  family, 
being  "  the  only  surviving  son  of  William  Congreve,  Esq.  (who 
was  second  son  to  Richard  Congreve,  Esq.,  of  Congreve  and 
Stretton  in  that  county),"  to  wit,  Yorkshire.  Congreve  pere 
held  a  military  command,  which  took  him  to  Ireland  soon  after 
the  dramatist's  birth,  and  thus  young  William  had  the  incom- 
parable advantage  of  being  educated  at  Kilkenny,  and  after- 
ward at  Trinity,  Dublin,  the  "  silent  sister,"  as  it  is  commonly 
called  at  our  universities. 

At  the  age  of  nineteen,  this  youth  sought  the  classic  shades 
of  the  Middle  Temple,  of  which  he  was  entered  a  student,  but 
by  the  honorable  society  of  which  he  was  never  called  to  the 
bar ;  but  whether  this  was  from  a  disinclination  to  study 
"  Coke  upon  Lyttelton,"  or  from  an  incapacity  to  digest  the 
requisite  number  of  dinners,  the  devouring  of  which  qualify  a 
young  gentleman  to  address  an  enlightened  British  jury,  we 
have  no  authority  for  deciding.  He  was  certainly  not  the 
first,  nor  the  last,  young  Templar  who  has  quitted  special 
pleading  on  a  crusade  to  the  heights  of  Parnassus,  and  he  be- 
gan early  to  try  the  nib  of  his  pen  and  the  color  of  his  ink  in 
a  novel.  Eheu !  how  many  a  novel  has  issued  from  the  dull, 
dirty  chambers  of  that  same  Temple!  The  waters  of  the 


CONGREVE   FINDS   HIS   VOCATION.  Ill 

Thames  just  there  seem  to  have  been  augmented  by  a  mingled 
flow  of  sewage  and  Helicon,  though  the  former  is  undoubtedly 
in  the  greater  proportion.  This  novel,  called  "  Incognita ;  or 
Love  and  Duty  Reconciled,"  seems  to  have  been — for  I  con- 
fess that  I  have  not  read  more  than  a  chapter  of  it,  and  hope 
I  never  may  be  forced  to  do  so — great  rubbish,  with  good 
store  of  villains  and  ruffians,  love-sick  maidens  who  tune  their 
lutes — always  conveniently  at  hand — and  love-sick  gallants 
who  run  their  foes  through  the  body  with  the  greatest  imag- 
inable ease.  It  was,  in  fact,  such  a  novel  as  James  might  have 
written,  had  he  lived  a  century  and  a  half  ago.  It  brought  its 
author  but  little  fame,  and  accordingly  he  turned  his  attention 
to  another  branch  of  literature,  and  in  1693  produced  "The 
Old  Bachelor,"  a  play  of  which  Dry  den,  his  friend,  had  so  high 
an  opinion  that  he  called  it  the  "  best  first-play  he  had  ever 
read."  However,  before  being  put  on  the  stage  it  was  sub- 
mitted to  Dryden,  and  by  him  and  others  prepared  for  repre- 
sentation, so  that  it  was  well  fathered.  It  was  successful 
enough,  and  Congreve  thus  found  his  vocation.  In  his  dedi- 
cation— a  regular  piece  of  flummery  of  those  days,  for  which 
authors  were  often  well  paid,  either  in  cash  or  interest — he  ac- 
knowledges a  debt  of  gratitude  to  Lord  Halifax,  who  appears 
to  have  taken  the  young  man  by  the  hand. 

The  young  Templar  could  do  nothing  better  now  than  write 
another  play.  Play-making  was  as  fashionnble  an  amusement 
in  those  days  of  Old  Drury,  the  only  patented  theatre  then,  as 
novel- writing  is  in  1860;  and  when  the  young  ensign,  Van- 
brugh,  could  write  comedies  and  take  the  direction  of  a  thea- 
tre, it  was  no  derogation  to  the  dignity  of  the  Staffordshire 
squire's  grandson  to  do  as  much.  Accordingly,  in  the  follow- 
ing year  he  brought  out  a  better  comedy,  "  The  Double  Deal- 
er," with  a  prologue  which  was  spoken  by  the  famous  Anne 
Bracegirdle.  She  must  have  been  eighty  years  old  when  Hor- 
ace Walpole  wrote  of  her  to  that  other  Horace — Mann :  "  Tell 
Mr.  Chute  that  his  friend  Bracegirdle  breakfasted  with  me 
this  morning.  As  she  went  out  and  wanted  her  clogs,  she 
turned  to  me  and  said :  '  I  remember  at  the  playhouse  they 
used  to  call,  Mrs.  Oldfield's  chair !  Mrs.  Barry's  clogs !  and  Mrs. 
Bracegirdle's  pattens !' "  These  three  ladies  were  all  buried 
in  Westminster  Abbey,  and,  except  Mrs.  Gibber,  the  most  beau- 
tiful and  most  sinful  of  them  all — though  they  were  none  of 
them  spotless — are  the  only  actresses  whose  ashes  and  memo- 
ries are  hallowed  by  the  place,  for  we  can  scarcely  say  that 
they  do  it  much  honor. 

The  success  of  "  The  Double  Dealer"  was  at  first  moderate, 
although  that  highly  respectable  woman,  Queen  Mary,  honor- 


112  VERSES   TO    QUEEN   MARY. 

ed  it  with  her  august  presence,  which  forthwith  called  up 
verses  of  the  old  adulatory  style,  though  with  less  point  and 
neatness  than  those  addressed  to  the  Virgin  Queen : 

"  Wit  is  again  the  care  of  majesty," 
said  the  poet,  and 

' '  Thus  flourished  wit  in  our  forefathers'  age, 
And  thus  the  Roman  and  Athenian  stage. 
Whose  wit  is  best,  we'll  not  presume  to  tell, 
But  this  we  know,  our  audience  will  excell ; 
For  never  was  in  Rome,  nor  Athens  seen 
So  fair  a  circle,  and  so  bright  a  queen." 

.But  this  was  not  enough,  for  when  Her  Majesty  departed  for 
another  realm  in  the  same  year,  Congreve  put  her  into  a  high- 
ly eulogistic  pastoral,  under  the  name  of  Pastora,  and  made 
some  compliments  on  her,  which  were  considered  the  finest 
strokes  of  poetry  and  flattery  combined,  that  an  age  of  ad- 
dresses and  eulogies  could  produce. 

"As  lofty  pines  o'ertop  the  lowly  steed, 
So  did  her  graceful  height  all  nymphs  exceed. 
To  which  excelling  height  she  bore  a  mind 
Humble  as  osiers,  bending  to  the  wind. 
***** 

I  mourn  Pastora  dead ;  let  Albion  mourn, 
And  sable  clouds  her  chalkie  cliffs  adorn." 

This  play  was  dedicated  to  Lord  Halifax,  of  whom  we  have 
spoken,  and  who  continued  to  be  Congreve's  patron. 

The  fame  of  the  young  man  was  now  made ;  but  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  it  was  destined  to  shine  out  more  brilliantly  still. 
Old  Betterton — one  of  the  best  Hamlets  that  ever  trod  the 
stage,  and  of  whom  Booth  declared  that  when  he  was  playing 
the  Ghost  to  his  Hamlet,  his  look  of  surprise  and  horror  was 
so  natural,  that  Booth  could  not  for  some  minutes  recover 
himself— was  now  a  veteran  in  his  sixtieth  year.  For  forty 
years  he  had  walked  the  boards  and  made  a  fortune  for  the 
patentees  of  Drury.  It  was  very  shabby  of  them,  therefore,  to 
give  some  of  his  best  parts  to  younger  actors.  Betterton  was 
disgusted,  and  determined  to  set  up  for  himself,  to  which  end 
he  managed  to  procure  another  patent,  turned  the  Queen's 
Court  in  Portugal  Row,  Lincoln's  Inn,  into  a  theatre,  and 
opened  it  on  the  30th  of  April,  1695.  The  building  had  been 
before  used  as  a  theatre  in  the  days  of  the  Merry  Monarch, 
and  Tom  Killegrew  had  acted  here  some  twenty  years  before ; 
but  it  had  again  become  a  "  tennis-quatre  of  the  lesser  sort," 
says  Gibber,  and  the  new  theatre  was  not  very  grand  in  fabric. 
But  Betterton  drew  to  it  all  the  best  actors  and  actresses  of 
his  former  company ;  and  Mrs.  Barry  and  Mrs.  Bracegirdle  re- 


CONGKEVE  ABANDONS  THE  DRAMA.  113 

mained  true  to  the  old  man.  Congreve,  to  his  honor,  espoused 
the  same  cause,  and  the  theatre  opened  with  his  play  of  "  Love 
for  Love,"  which  was  more  successful  than  either  of  the  for- 
mer. The  veteran  himself  spoke  the  prologue,  and  fair  Brace- 
girdle  the  epilogue,  in  which  the  poet  thus  alluded  to  their 
change  of  stage : 

"And  thus  our  audience,  which  did  once  resort 
To  shining  theatres  to  see  our  sport, 
Now  find  us  tost  into  a  tennis-court. 
Thus  from  the  past,  we  hope  for  future  grace : 
I  beg  it — 
And  some  here  know  I  have  a  begging  face ." 

The  king  himself  completed  the  success  of  the  opening  by  at- 
tending it,  and  the  theatre  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  might  have 
ruined  the  older  house,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  rapidity  with 
which  Yanbrugh  and  Gibber,  who  wrote  for  Old  Drury,  man- 
aged to  concoct  their  pieces ;  while  Congreve  was  a  slower, 
though  perhaps  better,  writer.  "  Love  for  Love"  was  here- 
after a  favorite  of  Betterton's,  and  when  in  1709,  a  year  before 
his  death,  the  company  gave  the  old  man — then  in  ill  health, 
poor  circumstances,  and  bad  spirits — a  benefit,  he  chose  this 
play,  and  himself,  though  more  than  seventy,  acted  the  part 
of  Valentine,  supported  by  Mrs.  Bracegirdle  as  Angelina,  and 
Mrs.  Barry  as  Frail. 

The  young  dramatist,  with  all  his  success,  was  not  satisfied 
with  his  fame,  and  resolved  to  show  the  world  that  he  had  as 
much  poetry  as  wit  in  him.  This  he  failed  to  do;  and,  like 
better  writers,  injured  his  own  fame,  by  not  being  contented 
with  what  he  had.  Congreve — the  wit,  the  dandy,  the  man 
about  town — took  it  into  his  head  to  write  a  tragedy.  In 
1697  "The  Mourning  Bride"  was  acted  at  the  Tennis  Court 
Theatre.  The  author  was  wise  enough  to  return  to  his  former 
muse,  and  some  time  after  produced  his  best  piece,  so  some 
think,  "  The  Way  of  the  World,"  which  was  also  performed 
by  Betterton's  company ;  but,  alas  !  for  overwriting — that  ca- 
coethes  of  imprudent  men — it  was  almost  hissed  off  the  stage. 
Whether  this  was  owing  to  a  wearjness  of  Congreve's  style, 
or  whether  at  the  time  of  its  first  appearance  Collier's  attacks, 
of  which  anon,  had  already  disgusted  the  public  with  the  ob- 
scenity and  immorality  of  this  writer,  I  do  not  know ;  but, 
whatever  the  cause,  the  consequence  was  that  Mr.  William 
Congreve,  in  a  fit  of  pique,  made  up  his  mind  never  to  write 
another  piece  for  the  stage — a  wise  resolution,  perhaps — and 
to  turn  fine  gentleman  instead.  With  the  exception  of  com- 
posing a  masque  called  the  "  Judgment  of  Paris,"  and  an  op- 
era, "  Gemele,"  which  was  never  performed,  he  kept  this  reso- 


114  JEEEMY   COLLIER. 

lution  very  honestly ;  and  so  Mr.  William  Congreve's  career 
as  a  playwright  ends  at  the  early  age  of  thirty. 

But  though  he  abandoned  the  drama,  he  was  not  allowed  to 
retire  in  peace.  There  was  a  certain  worthy,  but  peppery  lit- 
tle man,  who,  though  a  Jacobite  and  a  clergyman,  was  stanch 
and  true,  and  as  superior  in  character — even,  indeed,  in  vigor 
of  writing — to  Congreve,  as  Somers  was  to  every  man  of  his 
age.  This  was  Jeremy  Collier,  to  whom  we  owe  it  that  there 
is  any  English  drama  fit  to  be  acted  before  our  sisters  and 
wives  in  the  present  day.  Jeremy,  the  peppery,  purged  the 
stage  in  a  succession  of  Jeremiads. 

Born  in  1650.  educated  at  Cambridge  as  a  poor  scholar,  or- 
dained at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  presented  three  years  later 
with  the  living  of  Ampton,  near  Bury  St.  Edmunds,  Jeremy 
had  two  qualities  to  recommend  him  to  Englishmen — respect- 
ability and  pluck.  In  an  age  when  the  clergy  were  as  bad  as 
the  blackest  sheep  in  their  flocks,  Jeremy  was  distinguished  by 
purity  of  life ;  in  an  age  when  the  only  safety  lay  in  adopting 
the  principles  of  the  Vicar  of  Bray,  Jeremy  was  a  Nonjuror, 
and  of  this  nothing  could  cure  him.  The  Revolution  of  1688 
was  scarcely  effected,  when  the  fiery  little  partisan  published 
a  pamphlet,  which  was  rewarded  by  a  residence  of  some 
months  in  Newgate,  not  in  the  capacity  of  chaplain.  But  he 
was  scarcely  let  out,  when  again  went  his  furious  pen,  and  for 
four  years  he  continued  to  assail  the  new  government,  till  his 
hands  were  shackled  and  his  mouth  closed  in  the  prison  of 
"  The  Gate-house."  Now,  see  the  character  of  the  man.  He 
was  liberated  upon  giving  bail,  but  had  no  sooner  reflected  on 
this  liberation  than  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was 
wrong,  by  offering  security,  to  recognize  the  authority  of  mag- 
istrates appointed  by  a  usurper,  as  he  held  William  to  be,  and 
Voluntarily  surrendered  himself  to  his  judges.  Of  course  he 
was  again  committed,  but  this  time  to  the  King's  Bench,  and 
would  doubtless  in  a  few  years  have  made  the  tour  of  the 
London  prisons,  if  his  enemies  had  not  got  tired  of  trying 
him.  Once  more  at  liberty,  he  passed  the  next  three  years  in 
retirement. 

After  1693,  Jeremy  Collier's  name  was  not  brought  before 
the  public  till  1696,  when  he  publicly  absolved  Sir  John  Friend 
and  Sir  William  Perkins,  at  their  execution,  for  being  concern- 
ed in  a  plot  to  assassinate  King  William.  His  "  Essays  on 
Moral  Subjects"  were  published  in  1697;  2d  vol.,  1705  ;  3d 
vol.,  1709.  But  the  only  way  to  put  out  a  firebrand  like  this 
is  to  let  it  alone,  and  Jeremy,  being  no  longer  persecuted,  be- 
gan, at  last,  to  think  the  game  was  grown  stupid,  and  gave  it 
up.  He  was  a  well-meaning  man,  however,  and  as  long  as  he 
had  the  luxury  of  a  grievance,  would  injure  no  one. 


THE   IMMORALITY   OF   THE   STAGE.  115 

fte  found  one  now  in  the  immorality  of  his  age,  and  if  he  had 
left  politics  to  themselves  from  the  first,  he  might  have  done 
much  more  good  than  he  did.  Against  the  vices  of  a  court 
and  courtly  circles  it  was  useless  to  start  a  crusade  single- 
handed  ;  but  his  quaint  clever  pen  might  yet  dress  out  a  pow- 
erful Jeremiad  against  those  who  encouraged  the  licentious- 
ness of  the  people.  Jeremy  was  no  Puritan,  for  he  was  a 
Conjuror  and  a  Jacobite,  and  we  may,  therefore,  believe  that 
the  cause  was  a  good  one,  when  we  find  him  adopting  pre- 
cisely the  same  line  as  the  Puritans  had  done  before  him.  In 
1608  he  published,  to  the  disgust  of  all  Drury  and  Lincoln's 
Inn,  his  "  Short  View  of  the  Immorality  and  Profaneness  of 
the  English  Stage,  together  with  the  Sense  of  Antiquity  upon 
this  Argument." 

While  the  King  of  Naples  is  supplying  his  ancient  Venuses 
with  gowns,  and  putting  his  Marses  and  Herculeses  into  pan- 
taloons, there  are — such  are  the  varieties  of  opinion — respect- 
able men  in  this  country  who  call  Paul  de  Kock  the  greatest 
moral  writer  of  his  age,  and  who  would  yet  like  to  see  "  The 
Relapse,"  "  Love  for  Love,"  and  the  choice  specimens  of 
"Wycherley,  Farquhar,  and  even  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
acted  at  the  Princess's  and  the  Haymarket  in  the  year  of 
grace  1860.  I  am  not  writing  "A  Short  View"  of  this  or  any 
other  moral  subject;  but  this  I  must  say — the  effect  of  a  sight 
or  sound  on  a  human  being's  silly  little  passions  must  of  ne- 
cessity be  relative.  You  and  I  can  read  "Don  Juan,"  Lewis's 
"Monk,"  the  plays  of  Congreve,  and  any  or  all  of  the  publica- 
tions of  Holywell  Street,  without  more  than  disgust  at  their 
obscenity  and  admiration  for  their  beauties.  But  could  we  be 
pardoned  for  putting  these  works  into  the  hands  of  "sweet 
seventeen,"  or  making  Christmas  presents  of  them  to  our 
boys  ?  Ignorance  of  evil  is,  to  a  certain  extent,  virtue :  let 
boys  be  boys  in  purity  of  mind  as  long  as  they  can :  let  the 
unrefined  "great  unwashed"  be  treated  also  much  in  the  same 
way  as  young  people.  I  maintain  that  to  a  coarse  mind  all  im- 
proper ideas,  however  beautifully  clothed,  suggest  only  sensual 
thoughts — nay,  the  very  modesty  of  the  garments  makes  them 
the  more  insidious — the  more  dangerous.  I  would  rather  give 
my  boy  John,  Massinger,  or  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  whose 
very  improper  things  "are  called  by  their  proper  names," 
than  let  him  dive  in  the  prurient  innuendo  of  these  later  writ- 
ers. 

But  there  is  no  need  to  argue  the  question — the  public  has 
decided  it  long  since,  and  except  in  indelicate  ballets  and  oc- 
casional rather  French  passages  in  farce,  our  modern  stage  is 
free  from  immorality.  Even  in  Garrick's  days,  when  men  were 


116  CONGBEVE'S  WEITINGS. 

not  much  more  refined  than  in  those  of  Queen  Anne,  it  was 
found  impossible  to  put  the  old  drama  on  the  stage  without  con- 
siderable weeding.  Indeed  I  doubt  if  even  the  liberal  uphold- 
er of  Paul  de  Kock  wrould  call  Congreve  a  moral  writer ;  but 
I  confess  I  am  not  a  competent  judge,  for,  risum  teneatis,  my 
critics,  I  have  not  read  his  works  since  I  was  a  boy,  and  what 
is  more,  I  have  no  intention  of  reading  them.  I  well  remem- 
ber getting  into  my  hands  a  large  thick  volume,  adorned  with 
miserable  woodcuts,  and  bearing  on  its  back  the  title  "  Wych- 
erley,  Congreve,  Vanbrugh,  and  Farquhar."  I  devoured  it  at 
first  with  the  same  avidity  with  which  one  might  welcome  a 
bottle-imp,  who  at  the  hour  of  one's  dullness  turned  up  out  of 
the  carpet  and  offered  you  delights  new  and  old  for  nothing 
but  a  tether  on  your  soul ;  and  with  a  like  horror,  boy  though 
I  was,  I  recoiled  from  it  when  any  better  moment  came.  It 
seemed  to  me,  when  I  read  this  book,  as  if  life  were  too  rot- 
ten for  any  belief,  a  nest  of  sharpers,  adulterers,  cut-throats, 
and  prostitutes.  There  was  none — as  far  as  I  remember — of 
that  amiable  weakness,  of  that  better  sentiment,  which  in  Ben 
Jonson  or  Massinger  reconcile  us  to  human  nature.  If  truth 
be  a  test  of  genius,  it  must  be  a  proof  of  true  poetry,  that  man 
is  not  made  uglier  than  he  is.  Nay,  his  very  ugliness  loses  its 
intensity  and  falls  upon  our  diseased  tastes,  for  want  of  some 
goodness,  some  purity  and  honesty  to  relieve  it.  I  will  not  say 
that  there  is  none  of  this  in  Congreve.  I  only  know  that  my 
recollection  of  his  plays  is  like  that  of  a  vile  nightmare,  which 
I  would  not  for  any  thing  have  return  to  me.  I  have  read, 
since,  books  as  bad,  perhaps  worse  in  some  respects,  but  I  have 
found  the  redemption  here  and  there.  I  would  no  more  place 
Shandy  in  any  boy's  hands  than  Congreve  and  Farquhar;  and 
yet  I  can  read  Tristram  again  and  again  with  delight;  for  amid 
all  that  is  bad  there  stand  out  Trim  and  Toby,  pure  specimens 
of  the  best  side  of  human  nature,  coming  home  to  us  and  'tell- 
ing us  that  the  world  is  not  all  bad.  There  may  be  such  touch- 
es in  "  Love  for  Love,"  or  "  The  Way  of  the  World"— I  know 
not  and  care  not.  To  my  remembrance  Congreve  is  but  a  hor- 
rible nightmare,  and  may  the  fates  forbid  I  should  be  forced 
to  go  through  his  plays  again. 

Perhaps,  then,  Jeremy  was  not  far  wrong  when  he  attacked 
these  specimens  of  the  drama  with  an  unrelenting  Nemesis ; 
but  he  was  not  before  his  age.  It  was  less  the  obvious  coarse- 
ness of  these  productions  with  which  he  found  fault  than  their 
demoralizing  tendency  in  a  direction  which  we  should  now,  per- 
haps, consider  innocuous.  Certainly  the  Jeremiad  overdid  it, 
and  like  a  swift  but  not  straight  bowler  at  cricket,  he  sent  balls 
which  no  wicket-keeper  could  stop,  and  which,  therefore,  were 


JEREMY'S  "SHORT  VIEWS."  117 

harmless  to  the  batter.  He  did  not  want  boldness.  He  attack- 
ed Dryden,  now  close  upon  his  grave ;  Congreve,  a  young  man, 
Vanbrugh,  Gibber,  Farquhar,  and  the  rest,  all  alive,  all  in  the 
zenith  of  their  fame,  and  all  as  popular  as  writers  could  be.  It 
was  as  much  as  if  a  man  should  stand  up  to-day  and  denounce 
Dickens  and  Thackeray,  with  the  exception  that  well-meaning 
people  went  along  with  Jeremy,  whereas  very  few  would  do 
more  than  smile  at  the  zeal  of  any  one  who  tilted  against  our 
modern  pets.  Jeremy,  no  doubt,  was  bold,  but  he  wanted  tact, 
and  so  gave  his  enemy  occasion  to  blaspheme.  He  made  out 
cases  where  there  were  none,  and  let  alone  what  we  moderns 
should  denounce.  So  Congreve  took  up  the  cudgels  against 
him  with  much  wit  and  much  coarseness,  and  the  two  fought 
out  the  battle  in  many  a  pamphlet  and  many  a  letter.  But  Jer- 
emy was  not  to  be  beat.  His  "  Short  View"  was  followed  by 
"A  Defense  of  the  Short  View,"  a  "  Second  Defense  of  the 
Short  View,"  "A  Farther  Short  View,"  and,  in  short,  a  num- 
ber of  "  Short  Views,"  which  had  been  better  merged  into  one 
"  Long  Sight."  Jeremy  grew  coarse  and  bitter ;  Congreve 
coarser  and  bitterer ;  and  the  whole  controversy  made  a  pret- 
ty chapter  for  the  "  Quarrels  of  Authors."  But  the  Jeremiad 
triumphed  in  the  long  run,  because,  if  its  method  was  bad,  its 
cause  was  good,  and  a  succeeding  generation  voted  Congreve 
immoral.  Enough  of  Jeremy.  We  owe  him  a  tribute  for  his 
pluck,  and  though  no  one  reads  him  in  the  present  day,  we  may 
be  thankful  to  him  for  having  led  the  way  to  a  better  state  of 
things.* 

Congreve  defended  himself  in  eight  letters  addressed  to  Mr. 
Moyle,  and  we  can  only  say  of  them,  that,  if  any  thing,  they  are 
yet  coarser  than  the  plays  he  would  excuse. 

The  works  of  the  young  Templar,  and  his  connection  with 
Betterton,  introduced  him  to  all  the  writers  and  wits  of  his 
day.  He  and  Vanbrugh,  though  rivals,  were  fellow-workers, 
and  our  glorious  Haymarket  Theatre,  which  has  gone  on  at 
times  when  Drury  and  Covent  Garden  have  been  in  despair, 
owes  its  origin  to  their  confederacy.  But  Vanbrugh's  theatre 
was  on  the  site  of  the  present  Opera  House,  and  the  Haymar- 
ket was  set  up  as  a  rival  concern.  Vanbrugh's  was  built  in 
1705,  and  met  the  usual  fate  of  theatres,  being  burnt  down 
some  eighty-four  years  after.  It  is  curious  enough  that  this 
house,  destined  for  the  "legitimate  drama" — often  a  very  ille- 
gitimate performance — was  opened  by  an  opera  set  to  Italian 
music,  so  that  "Her  Majesty's"  has  not  much  departed  from 
the  original  cast  of  the  place. 

*  Dryden,  in  the  Preface  to  his  Fables,  acknowledged  that  Collier  "  had, 
in  many  points,  taxed  him  justly." 


118 

Perhaps  Congreve's  best  friend  was  Dryden.  This  man's 
life  and  death  are  pretty  well  known,  and  even  his  funeral  has 
been  described  time  and  again.  But  Corinna — as  she  was 
styled — gave  of  the  latter  an  account  which  has  been  called 
romantic,  and  much  discredited.  There  is  a  deal  of  character- 
istic humor  in  her  story  of  the  funeral,  and  as  it  has  long  been 
lost  sight  of,  it  may  not  be  unpalatable  here  :  Dryden  died  on 
May-day,  1701,  and  Lord  Halifax*  undertook  to  give  his  body 
a  private  funeral  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

"  On  the  Saturday  following,"  writes  Corinna,  "the  Company 
came.  The  Corps  was  put  into  a  Velvet  Hearse,  and  eighteen 
Mourning  Coaches  filled  with  Company  attending.  When, 
just  before  they  began  to  move,  Lord  Jeffrey s,f  with  some  of 
his  rakish  Companions,  coming  by,  in  Wine,  ask'd  whose 
Funeral  ?  And  being  told :  '  What !'  cries  he,  '  shall  Dryden, 
the  greatest  Honour  and  Ornament  of  the  Nation,  be  buried 
after  this  private  Manner  ?  No,  Gentlemen !  let  all  that  lov'd 
Mr.  Dryden,  and  honour  his  Memory,  alight,  and  join  with  me 
in  gaining  my  Lady's  Consent,  to  let  me  have  the  Honour  of 
his  Interment,  which  shall  be  after  another  manner  than  this, 
and  I  will  bestow  £1000  on  a  Monument  in  the  Abbey  for 
him.'  The  Gentlemen  in  the  Coaches,  not  knowing  of  the 
Bishop  of  Rochester's  Favour,  nor  of  Lord  Halifax's  generous 
Design  (these  two  noble  Spirits  having,  out  of  Respect  to  the 
Family,  enjoin'd  Lady  Elsabeth  and  her  Son  to  keep  their  Fa- 
vour concealed  to  the  World,  and  let  it  pass  for  her  own  Ex- 
pense), readily  came  out  of  the  Coaches,  and  attended  Lord 
Jeffreys  up  to  the  Lady's  Bed-side,  who  was  then  sick.  He  re- 
peated the  Purport  of  what  he  had  before  said,  but  she  absolute- 
ly refusing,  he  fell  on  his  knees,  vowing  never  to  rise  till  his  Re- 
quest was  granted.  The  rest  of  the  Company,  by  his  Desire, 
kneeled  also ;  she  being  naturally  of  a  timorous  Disposition, 
and  then  under  a  sudden  surprise,  fainted  away.  As  soon  as 
she  recover'd  her  speech,  she  cry'd,  4No,  no!'  *  Enough, 
gentlemen,'  replied  he  (rising  briskly), '  My  Lady  is  very  good, 
she  says,  Go,  go !'  She  repeated  her  former  Words  with  all 
her  Strength,  but  alas  in  vain !  her  feeble  Voice  was  lost  in 
their  Acclamations  of  Joy!  and  Lord  Jeffreys  order'd  the 
Hearsemen  to  carry  the  Corps  to  Russell's,  an  undertaker  in 
Cheapside,  and  leave  it  there,  till  he  sent  orders  for  the  Em- 
balment,  which,  he  added,  should  be  after  the  Royal  Manner. 
His  directions  were  obey'd,  the  Company  dispersed,  and  Lady 
Elsabeth  and  Mr.  Charles  remained  Inconsolable.  Next  Morn- 

*  Charles  Montagu,  Earl  of  Halifax.  Lord  Halifax  was  born  in  1661, 
and  died  in  1715.  He  was  called  "Mouse  Montagu." 

f  Son  of  Judge  Jeffries :  satirized  by  Pope  under  the  name  of  "  Bufo." 


A   TUB-PEEACHEK.  119 

ing  Mr.  Charles  waited  on  Lord  Halifax,  etc.,  to  excuse  his 
Mother  and  self,  by  relating  the  real  Truth.  But  neither  his 
Lordship  nor  the  Bishop  would  admit  of  any  Plea ;  especially 
the  latter,  who  had  the  Abbey  lighted,  the  ground  open'd,  the 
Choir  attending,  an  Anthem  ready  set,  and  himself  waiting  for 
some  Hours  without  any  Corps  to  bury.  Russell,  after  three 
Days'  Expectance  of  Orders  for  Embalment,  without  receiving 
any,  waits  on  Lord  Jeffreys,  who,  pretending  Ignorance  of  the 
Matter,  turn'd  it  off  with  an  ill-natured  Jest,  saying,  4  Those 
who  observed  the  orders  of  a  drunken  Frolick,  deserved  no 
better  ;  that  he  remembered  nothing  at  all  of  it,  and  he  might 
do  what  he  pleased  with  the  Corps.'  On  this  Mr.  Russell 
waits  on  Lady  Elsabeth  and  Mr.  Dryden  ;  but  alas !  it  was 
not  in  their  power  to  answer.  The  season  was  very  hot,  the 
Deceas'd  had  liv'd  high  and  fast ;  and  being  corpulent,  and 
abounding  with  gross  Humours,  grew  very  offensive.  The  Un- 
dertaker, in  short,  threaten'd  to  bring  home  the  Corps,  and 
set  it  before  the  Door.  It  can  not  be  easily  imagin'd  what 
grief,  shame,  and  confusion  seized  this  unhappy  Family.  They 
begged  a  Day's  Respite,  which  was  granted.  Mr.  Charles 
wrote  a  very  handsome  Letter  to  Lord  Jeffreys,  who  returned 
it  with  this  cool  Answer,  '  He  knew  nothing  of  the  Matter, 
and  would  be  troubled  no  more  about  it.'  He  then  addressed 
the  Lord  Halifax  and  Bishop  of  Rochester,  who  were  both  too 
justly  tho'  unhappily  incensed,  to  do  anything  in  it.  In  this 
extreme  distress,  Dr.  Garth,  a  man  who  entirely  lov'd  Mr. 
Dryden,  and  was  withal  a  Man  of  Generosity  and  great  Hu- 
manity, sends  for  the  Corps  to  the  College  of  Physicians  in 
Warwick  Lane,  and  proposed  a  Funeral  by  subscription,  to 
which  himself  set  a  most  noble  example.  Mr.  Wycherley, 
and  several  others,  among  whom  must  not  be  forgotten  Henry 
Cromwell,  Esq.,  Captain  Gibbons,  and  Mr.  Christopher  Met- 
calfe,  Mr.  Dryden's  Apothecary  and  intimate  Friend  (since  a 
Collegiate  Physician),  who  with  many  others  contributed  most 
largely  to  the  Subscription ;  and  at  last  a  Day,  about  three 
Weeks  after  his  Decease,  was  appointed  for  the  Interment  at 
the  Abbey.  Dr.  Garth  pronounced  a  fine  Latin  Oration  over 
the  Corps  at  the  College ;  but  the  audience  being  numerous, 
and  the  Room  large,  it  was  requisite  the  Orator  should  be  ele- 
vated, that  he  might  be  heard.  But  as  it  unluckily  happen'd 
there  was  nothing  at  hand  but  an  old  Beer-Barrel,  which  the 
Doctor  with  much  good-nature  mounted  ;  and  in  the  midst  of 
his  Oration,  beating  Time  to  the  Accent  with  his  Foot,  the 
Head  broke  in,  and  his  Feet  sunk  to  the  Bottom,  which  oc- 
casioned the  malicious  Report  of  his  Enemies,  4  That  he  was 
turned  a  Tub-Preacher.'  However,  he  finished  the  Oration 


120  HOBOSCOPIC    PREDICTIONS. 

with  a  superior  grace  and  genius,  to  the  loud  Acclamations  of 
Mirth,  which  inspir'd  the  mix'd  or  rather  Mob-Auditors.  The 
Procession  began  to  move,  a  numerous  Train  of  Coaches  at- 
tended the  Hearse :  But,  good  God !  in  what  Disorder  can 
only  be  express'd  by  a  Sixpenny  Pamphlet,  soon  after  publish'd, 
entitled  '  Dryden's  Funeral.'  At  last  the  Corps  arrived  at  the 
Abbey,  which  was  all  unlighted.  No  Organ  played,  no  An- 
them sung;  only  two  of  the  Singing  boys  preceded  the  Corps, 
who  sung  an  Ode  of  Horace,  with  each  a  small  candle  in  their 
Hand.  The  Butchers  and  other  Mob  broke  in  like  a  Deluge, 
so  that  only  about  eight  or  ten  Gentlemen  could  gain  Admis- 
sion, and  those  forced  to  cut  the  Way  with  their  drawn 
Swords.  The  Coffin  in  this  Disorder  was  let  down  into  Chau- 
cer's Grave,  with  as  much  Confusion,  and  as  little  Ceremony, 
as  was  possible ;  every  one  glad  to  save  themselves  from  the 
Gentlemen's  Swords,  or  the  Clubs  of  the  Mob.  When  the 
Funeral  was  over,  Mr.  Charles  sent  a  Challenge  to  Lord  Jef- 
freys, who  refusing  to  answer  it,  he  sent  several  others,  and 
went  often  himself,  but  could  neither  get  a  letter  deliver'd, 
nor  Admittance  to  speak  to  him,  that  he  resolved,  since  his 
Lordship  refused  to  answer  him  like  a  gentleman,  he  would 
watch  an  Opportunity  to  meet  him,  and  fight  off  hand,  tho' 
with  all  the  Rules  of  Honor ;  which  his  Lordship  hearing,  left 
the  Town,  and  Mr.  Charles  could  never  have  the  satisfaction 
to  meet  him,  tho'  he  sought  it  till  his  Death  with  the  utmost 
Application." 

Dryden  was,  perhaps,  the  last  man  of  learning  that  believed 
in  astrology;  though  an  eminent  English  author,  now  living, 
and  celebrated  for  the  variety  of  his  acquirements,  has  been 
known  to  procure  the  casting  of  horoscopes,  and  to  consult 
a  noted  "  astrologer,"  who  gives  opinions  for  a  small  sum. 
The  coincidences  of  prophecy  are  not  more  remarkable  than 
those  of  star-telling ;  and  Dryden  and  the  author  I  have  refer- 
red to  were  probably  both  captivated  into  belief  by  some  for- 
tuitous realization  of  their  horoscopic  predictions.  Nor  can 
we  altogether  blame  their  credulity,  when  we  see  biology, 
table-turning,  rapping,  and  all  the  family  of  impostures,  taken 
up  seriously  in  our  own  time. 

On  the  birth  of  his  son  Charles,  Dryden  immediately  cast 
his  horoscope.  The  following  account  of  Dryden's  paternal 
solicitude  for  his  son,  and  its  result,  may  be  taken  as  embel- 
lished, if  not  apocryphal.  Evil  hour,  indeed — Jupiter,  Venus, 
and  the  Sun  were  "  all  under  the  earth ;"  Mars  and  Saturn 
were  in  square :  eight,  or  a  multiple  of  it,  would  be  fatal  to 
the  child — the  square  foretold  it.  In  his  eighth,  his  twenty- 
third,  or  his  thirty-second  year,  he  was  certain  to  die,  though 


CONGREVE'S  AMBITION.  121 

he  might  possibly  linger  on  to  the  age  of  thirty-four.  The 
stars  did  all  they  could  to  keep  up  their  reputation.  When 
the  boy  was  eight  years  old  he  nearly  lost  his  life  by  being 
buried  under  a  heap  of  stones  out  of  an  old  wall,  knocked 
down  by  a  stag  and  hounds  in  a  hunt.  But  the  stars  were 
not  to  be  beaten ;  and  though  the  child  recovered,  went  in  for 
the  game  a  second  time  in  his  twenty-third  year,  when  he  fell, 
in  a  fit  of  giddiness,  from  a  tower,  and,  to  use  Lady  Elsabeth's 
words,  was  "  mash'd  to  a  mummy."  Still  the  battle  was  not 
over,  and  the  mummy  returned  in  due  course  to  its  human 
form,  though  considerably  disfigured.  Mars  and  Saturn  were 
naturally  disgusted  at  his  recovery,  and  resolved  to  finish  the 
disobedient  youth.  As  we  have  seen,  he  in  vain  sought  his 
fate  at  the  hand  of  Jeffreys ;  but  we  must  conclude  that  the 
offended  constellations  took  Neptune  in  partnership,  for  in  due 
course  the  youth  met  with  a  watery  grave. 

After  abandoning  the  drama,  Congreve  appears  to  have 
come  out  in  the  light  of  an  independent  gentleman.  He  was 
already  sufficiently  introduced  into  literary  society;  Pope, 
Steele,  Swift,  and  Addison  were  not  only  his  friends  but  his 
admirers,  and  we  can  well  believe  that  their  admiration  was 
considerable,  when  we  find  the  one  dedicating  his  "  Miscella- 
ny," the  other  his  translation  of  the  "  Iliad,"  to  a  man  who 
was  qualified  neither  by  rank  nor  fortune  to  play  Maacenas. 

At  what  time  he  was  admitted  to  the  Kit-kat  I  am  not  in 
a  position  to  state,  but  it  must  have  been  after  1715,  and  by 
that  time  he  was  a  middle-aged  man,  his  fame  was  long  since 
achieved ;  and  whatever  might  be  thought  of  his  works  and 
his  controversy  with  Collier,  he  was  recognized  as  one  of  the 
literary  stars  at  a  period  when  the  great  courted  the  clever, 
and  wit  was  a  passport  to  any  society.  Congreve  had  plenty 
of  that,  and  probably  at  the  Kit-kat  was  the  life  of  the  party 
when  Vanbrugh  was  away  or  Addison  in  a  graver  mood.  Un- 
troubled by  conscience,  he  could  launch  out  on  any  subject 
whatever ;  and  his  early  life,  spent  in  that  species  of  so-called 
gayety  which  was  then  the  routine  of  every  young  man  of  the 
world,  gave  him  ample  experience  to  draw  upon.  But  Con- 
greve's  ambition  was  greater  than  his  talents.  'No  man  so 
little  knew  his  real  value,  or  so  grossly  asserted  one  which  he 
had  not.  Gay,  handsome,  and  in  good  circumstances,  he  as- 
pired to  be,  not  Congreve  the  poet,  not  Congreve  the  wit,  not 
Congreve  the  man  of  mind,  but  simply  Congreve  the  fine  gen- 
tleman. Such  humility  would  be  charming  if  it  were  not  ab- 
surd. It  is  a  vice  of  scribes  to  seek  a  character  for  which  they 
have  little  claim.  Johnson  was  as  proud  or  prouder  of  his 
hunting  than  he  was  of  his  dictionary ;  Moore  loved  to  be 

F 


122  ANECDOTE   OP   VOLTAIRE   AND   CONGEEVE. 

thought  a  diner-out  rather  than  a  poet ;  even  Byron  affected 
the  fast  man  when  he  might  have  been  content  with  the  name 
of  "  genius  ;'*  but  Congreve  went  farther,  and  was  ashamed  of 
being  poet,  dramatist,  genius,  or  what  you  will.  An  anecdote 
of  him,  told  by  Voltaire,  who  may  have  been  an  "  awfu'  liar," 
but  had  no  temptation  to  invent  in  such  a  case  as  this,  is  so 
consistent  with  what  we  gather  of  the  man's  character,  that 
one  can  not  but  think  it  is  true. 

The  philosopher  of  Ferney  was  anxious  to  see  and  converse 
with  a  brother  dramatist  of  such  celebrity  as  the  author  of 
"The  Way  of  the  World."  He  expected  to  find  a  man  of  a 
keen  satirical  mind,  who  would  join  him  in  a  laugh  against  hu- 
manity. He  visited  Congreve,  and  naturally  began  to  talk  of 
his  works.  The  fine  gentleman  spoke  of  them  as  trifles  utterly 
beneath  his  notice,  and  told  him,  with  an  affectation  which 
perhaps  was  sincere,  that  he  wished  to  be  visited  as  a  gentle- 
man, not  as  an  author.  One  can  imagine  the  disgust  of  his 
brother  dramatist.  Voltaire  replied,  that  had  Mr.  Congreve 
been  nothing  more  than  a  gentleman,  he  should  not  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  call  on  him,  and  therewith  retired  with  an  ex- 
pression of  merited  contempt. 

It  is  only  in  the  present  day  that  authorship  is  looked  upon 
as  a  profession,  though  it  has  long  been  one.  It  is  amusing  to 
listen  to  the  sneers  of  men  who  never  wrote  a  book,  or  who, 
having  written,  have  gained  thereby  some  more  valuable  ad- 
vantage than  the  publisher's  check.  The  men  who  talk  with 
horror  of  writing  for  money,  are  glad  enough  if  their  works 
introduce  them  to  the  notice  of  the  influential,  and  aid  them 
in  procuring  a  place.  In  the  same  way,  Congreve  was  not  at 
all  ashamed  of  fulsome  dedications,  which  brought  him  the  fa- 
vor of  the  great.  Yet  we  may  ask,  if,  the  laborer  being  wor- 
thy of  his  hire,  and  the  labor  of  the  brain  being  the  highest, 
finest,  and  most  exhausting  that  can  be,  the  man  who  straight- 
forwardly and  without  affectation  takes  guineas  from  his  pub- 
lisher, is  not  honester  than  he  who  counts  upon  an  indirect 
reward  for  his  toil  ?  Fortunately,  the  question  is  almost  set- 
tled by  the  example  of  the  first  writers  of  the  present  day ; 
but  there  are  still  people  who  think  that  one  should  sit  down 
to  a  year's — ay  ten  years' — hard  mental  work,  and  expect  no 
return  but  fame.  Whether  such  objectors  have  always  pri- 
vate means  to  return  to,  or  whether  they  have  never  known 
what  it  is  to  write  a  book,  we  do  not  care  to  examine,  but  they 
are  to  be  found  in  large  numbers  among  the  educated ;  and 
indeed,  to  this  present  day,  it  is  held  by  the  upper  classes  to 
be  utterly  derogatory  to  write  for  money. 

Whether  this  was  the  feeling  in  Congreve's  day  or  not  is 


THE   PROFESSION   OF   MAECENAS.  123 

not  now  the  question.  Those  were  glorious  days  for  an  au- 
thor, who  did  not  mind  playing  the  sycophant  a  little.  In- 
stead of  having  to  trudge  from  door  to  door  in  Paternoster 
Row,  humbly  requesting  an  interview,  which  is  not  always 
granted — instead  of  sending  that  heavy  parcel  of  MS.,  which 
costs  you  a  fortune  for  postage,  to  publisher  after  publisher, 
till  it  is  so  often  "returned  with  thanks"  that  you  hate  the 
very  sight  of  it,  the  young  author  of  those  days  had  a  much 
easier  and  more  comfortable  part  to  play.  An  introduction  to 
an  influential  man  in  town,  who  again  would  introduce  you  to 
a  patron,  was  all  that  was  necessary.  The  profession  of  Mae- 
cenas was  then  as  recognized  and  established  as  that  of  doctor 
or  lawyer.  A  man  of  money  could  always  buy  brains ;  and 
most  noblemen  considered  an  author  to  be  as  necessary  a  part 
of  his  establishment  as  the  footmen  who  ushered  them  into  my 
lord's  presence,  A  fulsome  dedication  in  the  largest  type  was 
all  that  he  asked ;  and  if  a  writer  were  sufficiently  profuse  in 
his  adulation,  he  might  dine  at  Ma3cenas's  table,  drink  his  sack 
and  canary  without  stint,  and  apply  to  him  for  cash  whenever 
he  found  his  pockets  empty.  Nor  was  this  all :  if  a  writer 
were  sufficiently  successful  in  his  works  to  reflect  honor  on  his 
patron,  he  was  eagerly  courted  by  others  of  the  noble  profes- 
sion. He  was  offered,  if  not  hard  cash,  as  good  an  equivalent, 
in  the  shape  of  a  comfortable  government  sinecure ;  and  if  this 
was  not  to  be  had,  he  was  sometimes  even  lodged  and  boarded 
by  his  obliged  dedicatee.  In  this  way  he  was  introduced  into 
the  highest  society ;  and  if  he  had  wit  enough  to  support  the 
character,  he  soon  found  himself  facile  princeps  in  a  circle  of 
the  highest  nobility  in  the  land.  Thus  it  is  that  in  the  clubs 
of  the  day  we  find  title  and  wealth  mingling  with  wit  and 
genius ;  and  the  writer  who  had  begun  life  by  a  cringing  ded- 
ication, Avas  now  rewarded  by  the  devotion  and  assiduity  of 
the  men  he  had  once  flattered.  When  Steele,  Swift,  Addison, 
Pope,,and  Congreve  were  the  kings  of  their  sets,  it  was  time 
for  authors  to  look  and  talk  big.  Eheu!  those  happy  days 
are  gone ! 

Our  dramatist,  therefore,  soon  discovered  that  a  good  play 
was  the  key  to  a  good  place,  and  the  Whigs  took  care  that  he 
should  have  it.  Oddly  enough,  when  the  Tories  came  in  they 
did  not  turn  him  out.  Perhaps  they  wanted  to  gain  him  over 
to  themselves;  perhaps,  like  the  Vicar  of  Bray,  he  did  not  mind 
turning  his  coat  once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime.  However  this  may 
be,  he  managed  to  keep  his  appointment  without  offending  his 
own  party ;  and  when  the  latter  returned  to  power,  he  even 
induced  them  to  give  him  a  comfortable  little  sinecure,  which 
went  by  the  name  of  Secretary  to  the  Island  of  Jamaica,  and 
raised  the  income  from  his  appointments  to  £1200  a  year. 


124  CONGKEVE'S  PIUVATE  LIFE. 

From  this  period  he  was  little  before  the  public.  He  could 
afford  now  to  indulge  his  natural  indolence  and  selfishness.  His 
private  life  was  perhaps  not  worse  than  that  of  the  majority  of 
his  contemporaries.  He  had  his  intrigues,  his  mistresses,  the 
same  love  of  wine,  and  the  same  addiction  to  gluttony.  He 
had  the  reputation  of  a  wit,  and  with  wits  he  passed  his  time, 
sufficiently  easy  in  his  circumstances  to  feel  no  damping  to  his 
spirits  in  the  cares  of  this  life.  The  Island  of  Jamaica  proba- 
bly gave  him  no  further  trouble  than  that  of  signing  a  few  pa- 
pers from  time  to  time,  and  giving  a  receipt  for  his  salary.  His 
life,  therefore,  presents  no  very  remarkable  feature,  and  he  is 
henceforth  known  more  on  account  of  his  friends  than  for  aught 
he  may  himself  have  done.  The  best  of  these  friends  was  Wal- 
ter Moyle,  the  scholar,  who  translated  parts  of  Lucian  and  Xen- 
ophon,  and  was  pretty  well  known  as  a  classic.  He  was  a  Corn- 
ish man  of  independent  means,  and  it  was  to  him  that  Congreve 
addressed  the  letters  in  which  he  attempted  to  defend  himself 
from  the  attacks  of  Collier. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  a  wit  and  a  poet  should  go 
through  life  without  a  pi  atonic,  and  accordingly  we  find  our 
man  not  only  attached,  but  devoted  to  a  lady  of  great  distinc- 
tion. This  was  no  other  than  Henrietta,  Duchess  of  Marlbor- 
ough,  the  daughter  of  "  Malbrook"  himself,  and  of  the  famous 
"  Queen  Sarah."  Henrietta  was  the  eldest  daughter,  and  there 
was  no  son  to  inherit  the  prowess  of  Churchill  and  the  parsi- 
mony of  his  wife.  The  nation — to  which,  by  the  way,  the  Marl- 
boroughs  were  never  grateful — would  not  allow  the  title  of 
their  pet  warrior  to  .become  extinct,  and  a  special  Act  of  Par- 
liament gave  to  the  eldest  daughter  the  honors  of  the  duchy.* 
The  two  Duchesses  of  Marlborough  hated  each  other  cordially. 
Sarah's  temper  was  probably  the  main  cause  of  their  bicker- 
ing; but  there  is  never  a  feud  between  parent  and  child  in 
which  both  are  not  more  or  less  blamable. 

The  Duchess  Henrietta  conceived  a  violent  fancy  for  the 
wit  and  poet,  and  whatever  her  husband,  Lord  Godolphin,  may 
have  thought  of  it,  the  connection  ripened  into  a  most  inti- 
mate friendship,  so  much  so  that  Congreve  made  the  duchess 
not  only  his  executrix,  but  the  sole  residuary  legatee  of  all 
his  property.f  His  will  gives  us  some  insight  into  the  toady- 
ing character  of  the  man.  Only  four  near  relations  are  men- 
tioned as  legatees,  and  only  £540  is  divided  among  them; 
whereas,  after  leaving  £200  to  Mrs.  Bracegirdle,  the  actress ; 
£100,  "and  all  my  apparel  and  linnen  of  all  sorts"  to  a  Mrs. 
Rooke,  he  divides  the  rest  between  his  friends  of  the  nobil- 

*  See  Burke's  "Peerage." 

f  The  Duchess  of  Marlborough  received  £10,000  by  Mr.  Congreve's  will. 


CONGKEVE'S  DEATH  AND  BURIAL.  125 

ity,  Lords  Cobhara  and  Shannon,  the  Duchess  of  Newcastle, 
Lady  Mary  Godolphin,  Colonel  Churchill  (who  receives  "twen- 
ty pounds,  together  with  my  gold-headed  cane"),  and,  lastly, 
"to  the  poor  of  the  parish,"  the  magnificent  sum  often  pounds. 
"  Blessed  are  those  who  give  to  the  rich ;"  these  words  must 
surely  have  expressed  the  sentiment  of  the  worldly  Congreve. 

However,  Congreve  got  something  in  return  from  the  Duch- 
ess Henrietta,  which  he  might  not  have  received  from  "the  poor 
of  the  parish,"  to  wit,  a  monument,  and  an  inscription  on  it  writ- 
ten by  her  own  hand.  I  have  already  said  what  "  Queen  Sa- 
rah" thought  of  the  latter,  and,  for  the  rest,  those  who  care  to 
read  the  nonsense  on  the  walls  of  Westminster  Abbey  can  de- 
cide for  themselves  as  to  the  honor  the  poet  received  from  his 
titled  friend. 

The  latter  days  of  William  Congreve  were  passed  in  wit  and 
gout :  the  wine,  which  warmed  the  one  probably  brought  on 
the  latter.  After  a  course  of  ass's  milk,  which  does  not  seem 
to  have  done  him  much  good,  the  ex-dramatist  retired  to  Bath, 
a  very  fashionable  place  for  departing  life  in,  under  easy  and 
elegant  circumstances.  But  he  not  only  drank  of  the  springs 
beloved  of  King  Bladud,  of  apocryphal  memory,  but  even  went 
so  far  as  to  imbibe  the  snail-water,  which  was  then  the  last  spe- 
cies of  quack  cure  in  vogue.  This,  probably,  dispatched  him. 
But  it  is  only  just  to  that  disagreeable  little  reptile  that  in- 
fests our  gardens,  and  whose  slime  was  supposed  to  possess  pe- 
culiarly strengthening  properties,  to  state  that  his  death  was 
materially  hastened  by  being  overturned  when  driving  in  his 
chariot.  He  was  close  upon  sixty,  had  long  been  blind  from 
cataracts  in  his  eyes,  and  as  he  was  no  longer  either  useful  or 
ornamental  to  the  world  in  general,  he  could  perhaps  be  spared. 
He  died  soon  after  this  accident  in  January,  1729.  He  had  the 
sense  to  die  at  a  time  when  Westminster  Abbey,  being  regard- 
ed as  a  mausoleum,  was  open  to  receive  the  corpse  of  any  one 
who  had  a  little  distinguished  himself,  and  even  of  some  who 
had  no  distinction  whatever.  He  was  buried  there  with  great 
pomp,  and  his  dear  duchess  set  up  his  monument.  So  much 
for  his  body.  What  became  of  the  soul  of  a  dissolute,  vain, 
witty,  and  unprincipled  man,  is  no  concern  of  ours.  Hequiescat 
in  pace,  if  there  is  any  peace  for  those  who  are  buried  in  West- 
minster Abbey. 


BEAU  NASH, 

"  THERE  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun;"  said  Walpole,  by 
way  of  a  very  original  remark.  "  No,"  whispered  George 
Selwyn,  "  nor  Binder  the  grandson  either." 

Mankind,  as  a  body,  has  proved  its  silliness  in  a  thousand 
ways,  but  in  none,  perhaps,  so  ludicrously  as  in  its  respect  for 
a  man's  coat.  He  is  not  always  a  fool  that  knows  the  value 
of  dress ;  and  some  of  the  wisest  and  greatest  of  men  have 
been  dandies  of  the  first  water.  King  Solomon  was  one  and 
Alexander  the  Great  was  another ;  but  there  never  was  a  more 
despotic  monarch,  nor  one  more  humbly  obeyed  by  his  sub- 
jects, than  the  King  of  Bath,  and  he  won  his  dominions  by 
the  cut  of  his  coat.  But  as  Hercules  was  killed  by  a  dress- 
shirt,  so  the  beaux  of  the  modern  world  have  generally  ruin- 
ed themselves  by  their  wardrobes,  and  brought  remorse  to 
their  hearts,  or  contempt  from  the  very  people  who  once  wor- 
shiped them.  The  husband  of  Mrs.  Darner,  who  appeared  in 
a  new  suit  twice  a  day,  and  whose  wardrobe  sold  for  £15,000, 
blew  his  brains  out  at  a  coffee-house.  Beau  Fielding,  Beau 
Nash,  and  Beau  Brummell  all  expiated  their  contemptible 
vanity  in  obscure  old  age  of  want  and  misery.  As  the  world 
is  full  of  folly,  the  history  of  a  fool  is  as  good  a  mirror  to  hold 
up  to  it  as  another ;  but  in  the  case  of  Beau  Nash  the  only 
question  is,  whether  he  or  his  subjects  were  the  greater  fools. 
So  now  for  a  picture  of  as  much  folly  as  could  well  be  cram- 
med into  that  hot  basin  in  the  Somersetshire  hills,  of  which 
more  anon. 

It  is  a  hard  thing  for  a  man  not  to  have  had  a  father — hard- 
er still,  like  poor  Savage,  to  have  one  whom  he  can  not  get  hold 
of;  but  perhaps  it  is  hardest  of  all,  when  you  have  a  father, 
and  that  parent  a  very  respectable  man,  to  be  told  that  you 
never  had  one.  This  was  Nash's  case,  and  his  father  was  so 
little  known,  and  so  seldom  mentioned,  that  the  splendid  Beau 
was  thought  almost  to  have  dropped  from  the  clouds,  ready 
dressed  and  powdered.  He  dropped  in  reality  from  any  thing 
but  a  heavenly  place — the  shipping-town  of  Swansea :  so  that 
Wales  can  claim  the  honor  of  having  produced  the  finest  beau 
of  his  age. 

Old  Nash  was,  perhaps,  a  better  gentleman  than  his  son ; 
but  with  far  less  pretensions.  He  was  a  partner  in  a  glass- 


128  THE   KING    OF   BATH. 

manufactory.  The  Beau,  in  after  years,  often  got  rallied  on 
the  inferiority  of  his  origin,  and  the  least  obnoxious  answer  he 
ever  made  was  to  Sarah  of  Marlborough,  as  rude  a  creature  as 
himself,  who  told  him  he  was  ashamed  of  his  parentage.  "No, 
madam,"  replied  the  King  of  Bath,  "  I  seldom  mention  my  fa- 
ther, in  company,  not  because  I  have  any  reason  to  be  ashamed 
of  him,  but  because  he  has  some  reason  to  be  ashamed  of  me." 
Nash,  though  a  fop  and  a  fool,  was  not  a  bad-hearted  man,  as 
we  shall  see.  And  if  there  were  no  other  redeeming  point  in 
his  character,  it  is  a  great  deal  to  say  for  him,  that  in  an  age 
of  toadyism,  he  treated  rank  in  the  same  manner  as  he  did  the 
want  of  it,  and  did  his  best  to  remove  the  odious  distinctions 
which  pride  would  have  kept  up  in  his  dominions.  In  fact, 
King  Nash  may  be  thanked  for  having,  by  his  energy  in  this 
respect,  introduced  into  society  the  first  elements  of  that  mid- 
dle class  which  is  found  alone  in  England. 

Old  Nash — whose  wife,  by  the  way,  was  niece  to  that  Col- 
onel Poyer  who  defended  Pembroke  Castle  in  the  days  of  the 
first  Revolution — was  one  of  those  silly  men  who  want  to  make 
gentlemen  of  their  sons,  rather  than  good  men.  He  had  his 
wish.  His  son  Richard  was  a  very  fine  gentleman,  no  doubt ; 
but,  unfortunately,  the  same  circumstances  that  raised  him  to 
that  much-coveted  position,  also  made  him  a  gambler  and  a 
profligate.  Oh!  foolish  papas,  when  will  you  learn  that  a 
Christian  snob  is  worth  ten  thousand  irreligious  gentlemen? 
When  will  you  be  content  to  bring  up  your  boys  for  heaven 
rather  than  for  the  brilliant  world  ?  Nashr  senior,  sent  his 
son  first  to  school  and  then  to  Oxford,  to  be  made  a  gentle- 
man of.  Richard  was  entered  at  Jesus  College,  the  haunt  of 
the  Welsh.  In  my  day,  this  quiet  little  place  was  celebrated 
for  little  more  than  the  humble  poverty  of  its  members,  one 
third  of  whom  rejoiced  in  the  cognomen  of  Jones.  They  were 
not  renowned  for  cleanliness,  and  it  was  a  standing  joke  with 
us  silly  boys,  to  ask  at  the  door  for  "  that  Mr.  Jones  who  had 
a  tooth-brush."  If  the  college  had  the  same  character  then, 
Nash  must  have  astonished  its  dons,  and  we  are  not  surprised 
that  in  his  first  year  they  thought  it  better  to  get  rid  of  him. 

His  father  could  ill  afford  to  keep  him  at  Oxford,  and  fond- 
ly hoped  he  would  distinguish  himself.  "  My  boy  Dick"  did 
so  at  the  very  outset,  by  an  offer  of  marriage  to  one  of  those 
charming  sylphs  of  that  academical  city,  who  are  always  on 
the  look-out  for  credulous  undergraduates.  The  affair  was 
discovered,  and  Master  Richard,  who  was  not  seventeen,  was 
removed  from  the  University.*  Whether  he  ever,  in  after 

*  Warner  ("History  of  Bath, "p.  366)  says,  "Nash  was  removed  from 
Oxford  by  his  friends." 


OFFER    OF    KNIGHTHOOD.  129 

life,  made  another  offer,  I  know  not,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
he  ought  to  have  been  married,  and  that  the  connections  he 
formed  in  later  years,  were  far  more  disreputable  than  his  first 
love  affairs. 

The  worthy  glass-manufacturer  having  failed  to  make  his 
son  a  gentleman  in  one  way,  took  the  best  step  to  make  him 
a  blackguard,  and,  in  spite  of  the  wild  inclinations  he  had  al- 
ready evinced,  bought  him  a  commission  in  the  army.  In 
this  new  position  the  incipient  Beau  did  every  thing  but  his 
duty  ;  .dressed  superbly,  but  would  not  be  in  time  for  parade ; 
spent  more  money  than  he  had,  but  did  not  obey  orders ;  and 
finally,  though  not  expelled  from  the  army,  he  found  it  con- 
venient to  sell  his  commission,  and  return  home,  after  spend- 
ing the  proceeds. 

Papa  was  now  disgusted,  and  sent  the  young  Hopeless  to 
shift  for  himself.  What  could  a  well-disposed,  handsome 
youth  do  to  keep  body  and,  not  soul,  but  clothes  together  ? 
He  had  but  one  talent,  and  that  was  for  dress.  Alas,  for  our 
degenerate  days!  When  we  are  pitched  upon  our  own  bot- 
toms, we  must  work;  and  that  is  a  highly  ungentlemanly  thing 
to  do.  But  in  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  such  a  de- 
grading resource  was  quite  unnecessary.  There  were  always 
at  hand  plenty  of  establishments  where  a  youth  could  obtain 
the  necessary  funds  to  pay  his  tailor,  if  fortune  favored  him ; 
and  if  not,  he  could  follow  the  fashion  of  the  day,  and  take  to 
what  the  Japanese  call  "  the  happy  Dispatch."  Nash  proba- 
bly suspected  that  he  had  no  brains  to  blow  out,  and  he  de- 
termined the  more  resolutely  to  make  fortune  his  mistress. 
He  went  to  the  gaming-table,  and  turned  his  one  guinea  into 
ten,  and  his  ten  into  a  hundred,  and  was  soon  blazing  about  in 
gold  lace,  and  a  new  sword,  the  very  delight  of  dandies. 

He  had  entered  his  name,  by  way  of  excuse,  at  the  Temple, 
and  we  can  quite  believe  that  he  ate  all  the  requisite  dinners, 
though  it  is  not  so  certain  that  he  paid  for  them.  He  soon 
found  that  a  fine  coat  is  not  so  very  far  beneath  a  good  brain 
in  worldly  estimation,  and  when,  on  the  accession  of  William 
the  Third,  the  Templars,  according  to  the  old  custom,  gaATe  his 
Majesty  a  banquet,  Nash,  as  a  promising  Beau,  was  selected 
to  manage  the  establishment.  It  was  his  first  experience  of 
the  duties  of  an  M.  C.,  and  he  conducted  himself  so  ably  on  this 
occasion  that  the  king  even  offered  to  make  a  knight  of  him. 
Probably  Master  Richard  thought  of  his  empty  purse,  for  he 
replied  with  some  of  that  assurance  which  afterward  stood  him 
in  such  good  stead,  "Please  your  majesty,  if  you  intend  to  make 
me  a  knight,  I  wish  I  may  be  one  of  your  poor  knights  of 
Windsor,  and  then  I  shall  have  a  fortune,  at  least  able  to  sup- 

F2 


130  N ASH'S   GENEROSITY. 

port  my  title."  William  did  not  see  the  force  of  this  argument, 
and  Mr.  Nash  remained  Mr.  Nash  till  the  day  of  his  death. 
He  had  another  chance  of  the  title,  however,  in  days  when  he 
could  have  better  maintained  it,  but  again  he  refused.  Queen 
Anne  once  asked  him  why  he  declined  knighthood.  He  re- 
plied :  "  There  is  Sir  William  Read,  the  mountebank,  who  has 
just  been  knighted,  and  I  should  have  to  call  him  'brother.' " 
The  honor  was,  in  fact,  rather  a  cheap  one  in  those  days,  and 
who  knows  whether  a  man  who  had  done  such  signal  service 
to  his  country  did  not  look  forward  to  a  peerage?  _  Worse 
men  than  even  Beau  Nash  have  had  it. 

Well,  Nash  could  afford  to  defy  royalty,  for  he  was  to  be 
himself  a  monarch  of  all  he  surveyed,  and  a  good  deal  more ; 
but  before  we  follow  him  to  Bath,  let  us  give  the  devil  his 
due — which,  by  the  way,  he  generally  gets — and  tell  a  pair 
of  tales  in  the  Beau's  favor. 

Imprimis,  his  accounts  at  the  Temple  were  £10  deficient. 
Now  I  don't  mean  that  Nash  was  not  as  great  a  liar  as  most 
of  his  craft,  but  the  truth  of  this  tale  rests  on  the  authority  of 
the  "  Spectator,"  though  Nash  took  delight  in  repeating  it. 

"  Come  hither,  young  man,"  said  the  Benchers,  coolly : 
"  whereunto  this  deficit  ?" 

" Pri'thee,  good  masters,"  quoth  Nash,  "that  £10  was  spent 
on  making  a  man  happy." 

"A  man  happy,  young  sir,  pri'thee  explain." 

"  Odds  donners,"  quoth  Nash,  "  the  fellow  said  in  my  hear- 
ing that  his  wife  and  bairns  were  starving,  and  £10  would 
make  him  the  happiest  man  sub  sole,  and  on  such  an  occasion 
as  His  Majesty's  accession  could  I  refuse  it  him  ?" 

Nash  was,  proverbially,  more  generous  than  just.  He  would 
not  pay  a  debt  if  he  could  help  it,  but  would  give  the  very 
amount  to  the  first  friend  that  begged  it.  There  was  much 
ostentation  in  this,  but  then  my  friend  Nash  was  ostentatious. 
One  friend  bothered  him  day  and  night  for  £20  that  was  ow- 
ing to  him,  and  he  could  not  get  it.  Knowing  his  debtor's 
character,  he  hit,  at  last,  on  a  happy  expedient,  and  sent  a 
friend  to  borrow  the  money  "to  relieve  his  urgent  necessi- 
ties." Out  came  the  bank-note,  before  the  story  of  distress 
was  finished.  The  friend  carried  it  to  the  creditor,  and  when 
the  latter  again  met  Nash,  he  ought  to  have  made  him  a  pret- 
ty compliment  on  his  honesty. 

Perhaps  the  King  of  Bath  would  not  have  tolerated  in  any 
one  else  the  juvenile  frolics  he  delighted  in  after  years  to  re- 
late of  his  own  early  days.  When  at  a  loss  for  cash  he  would 
do  any  thing,  but  work,  for  a  fifty  pound  note,  and  having,  in 
one  of  his  trips,  lost  all  his  money  at  York,  the  Beau  under- 


DAYS    OF   FOLLY.  131 

took  to  "  do  penance"  at  the  minster  door  for  that  sum.  He 
accordingly  arrayed  himself — not  in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  but 
— in  an  able-bodied  blanket,  and  nothing  else,  and  took  his 
stand  at  the  porch  just  at  the  hour  when  the  dean  would  be 
going  in  to  read  service.  "He,  ho,"  cried  that  dignitary,  who 
knew  him,  "  Mr.  Nash  in  masquerade  ?"  "  Only  a  Yorkshire 
penance,  Mr.  Dean,"  quoth  the  reprobate ;  "  for  keeping  bad 
company,  too,"  pointing  therewith  to  the  friends  who  had 
come  to  see  the  sport. 

This  might  be  tolerated,  but  when,  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, a  young  man  emulates  the  hardiness  of  Godiva,  without 
her  merciful  heart,  we  may  not  think  quite  so  w^ell  of  him. 
Mr.  Richard  Nash,  Beau  Extraordinary  to  the  Kingdom  of 
Bath,  once  rode  through  a  village  in  that  costume  of  which 
even  our  first  parent  was  rather  ashamed,  and  that,  too,  on 
the  back  of  a  cow !  The  wager  was,  I  believe,  considerable. 
A  young  Englishman  did  something  more  respectable,  yet 
quite  as  extraordinary,  at  Paris,  not  a  hundred  years  ago,  for 
a  small  bet.  He  was  one  of  the  stoutest,  thickest-built  men 
possible,  yet  being  but  eighteen,  had  neither  whisker  nor  mus- 
tache to  masculate  his  clear  English  complexion.  At  the  Mai- 
son  Doree  one  night  he  offered  to  ride  in  the  Champs  Elysees 
in  a  lady's  habit,  and  not  be  mistaken  for  a  man.  A  friend 
undertook  to  dress  him,  and  went  all  over  Paris  to  hire  a  habit 
that  would  fit  his  round  figure.  It  was  hopeless  for  a  time, 
but  at  last  a  good-sized  body  was  found,  and  added  thereto, 
an  ample  skirt.  Felix  dressed  his  hair  with  mainte  plats  and 
a  net.  He  looked  perfect,  but  in  coming  out  of  the  hairdress- 
er's to  get  into  his  fly,  unconsciously  pulled  up  his  skirt  and 
displayed  a  sturdy  pair  of  well-trowsered  legs.  A  crowd  — 
there  is  always  a  ready  crowd  in  Paris — was  waiting,  and  the 
laugh  was  general:  This  hero  reached  the  horse-dealer's — 
"mounted,"  and  rode  down  the  Champs.  "A  very  fine  wom- 
an that,"  said  a  Frenchman  in  the  promenade,  "  but  what  a 
back  she  has !"  It  was  in  the  return  bet  to  this  that  a  now 
well-known  diplomat  drove  a  goat-chaise  and  six  down  the 
same  fashionable  resort,  with  a  monkey,  dressed  as  a  footman, 
in  the  back  seat.  The  days  of  folly  did  not,  apparently,  end 
with  Beau  Nash. 

There  is  a  long  lacune  in  the  history  of  this  worthy's  life, 
which  may  have  been  filled  up  by  a  residence  in  a  sponging- 
house,  or  by  a  temporary  appointment  as  billiard-marker ;  but 
the  heroic  Beau  accounted  for  his  disappearance  at  this  time 
in  a  much  more  romantic  manner.  He  used  to  relate  that  he 
was  once  asked  to  dinner  on  board  a  man-of-war  under  orders 
for  the  Mediterranean,  and  that  such  was  the  affection  the  of- 


132  A    VEKY    ROMANTIC   STOEY. 

licers  entertained  for  him,  that,  having  made  him  drunk — no 
difficult  matter — they  weighed  anchor,  set  sail,  and  carried  the 
successor  of  King  Bladud  away  to  the  wars.  Having  gone  so 
far,  Nash  was  not  the  man  to  neglect  an  opportunity  for  im- 
aginary valor.  He  therefore  continued  to  relate  that,  in  the 
apocryphal  vessel,  he  was  once  engaged  in  a  yet  more  apocry- 
phal encounter,  and  wounded  in  the  leg.  This  was  a  little  too 
much  for  the  good  Bathonians  to  believe,  but  Nash  silenced 
their  doubts.  On  one  occasion,  a  lady  who  was  present  when 
he  was  telling  this  story,  expressed  her  incredulity. 

"  I  protest,  madam,"  cried  the  Beau,  lifting  his  leg  up,  "  it 
is  true,  and  if  I  can  not  be  believed,  your  ladyship  may,  if 
you  please,  receive  further  information,  and  feel  the  ball  in  my 
leg." 

Wherever  Nash  may  have  passed  the  intervening  years, 
may  be  an  interesting  speculation  for  a  German  professor, 
but  is  of  little  moment  to  us.  We  find  him  again,  at  the  age 
of  thirty,  taking  first  steps  toward  the  complete  subjugation 
of  the  kingdom  he  afterward  ruled. 

There  is,  among  the  hills  of  Somersetshire,  a  huge  basin  form- 
ed by  the  river  Avon,  and  conveniently  supplied  with  a  nat- 
ural gush  of  hot  water,  which  can  be  turned  on  at  any  time 
for  the  cleansing  of  diseased  bodies.  This  hollow  presents 
many  curious  anomalies :  though  sought  for  centuries  for  the 
sake  of  health,  it  is  one  of  the  most  unhealthily-situated  places 
in  the  kingdom;  here  the  body  and  the  pocket  are  alike  clean- 
ed out,  but  the  spot  itself  has  been  noted  for  its  dirtiness  since 
the  days  of  King  Bladud' s  wise  pigs;  here,  again,  the  diseased 
flesh  used  to  be  healed,  but  the  healthy  soul  within  it  speedily 
besickened ;  you  came  to  cure  gout  and  rheumatism,  and  caught 
in  exchange  dice-fever. 

The  mention  of  those  pigs  reminds  me  that  it  would  be  a 
shameful  omission  to  speak  of  this  city  without  giving  the  sto- 
ry of  that  apocryphal  British  monarch,  King  Bladud.  But  let 
me  be  the  one  exception ;  let  me  respect  the  good  sense  of  the 
reader,  and  not  insult  him  by  supposing  him  capable  of  believ- 
ing a  mythic  jumble  of  kings,  and  pigs,  and  dirty  marshes, 
which  he  will,  if  he  cares  to,  find  at  full  length  in  any  "  Bath 
Guide" — price  sixpence. 

But  whatever  be  the  case  with  respect  to  the  Celtic  sover- 
eign, there  is,  I  presume,  no  doubt,  that  the  Romans  were  here, 
and  probably  the  centurions  and  tribunes  cast  the  alea  in  some 
pristine  assembly-room,  or  wagged  their  plumes  in  some  well- 
built  Pump-room,  with  as  much  spirit  of  fashion  as  the  full- 
bottomed-wigged  exquisites  in  the  reign  of  King  Nash.  At 
any  rate  Bath  has  been  in  almost  every  age  a  common  centre 


NASH   DESCENDS   UPON   BATH.  133 

for  health-seekers  and  gamesters — two  antipodal  races  who  al- 
ways flock  together — and  if  it  has  from  time  to  time  declined, 
it  has  only  been  for  a  period.  Saxon  churls  and  Norman  lords 
were  too  sturdy  to  catch  much  rheumatic  gout :  crusaders  had 
better  things  to  think  of  than  their  imaginary  ailments ;  good 
health  was  in  fashion  under  Plantagenets  and  Tudors ;  doctors 
were  not  believed  in ;  even  empirics  had  to  praise  their  wares 
with  much  wit,  and  Morrison  himself  must  have  mounted  a 
bank  and  dressed  in  Astleyian  costume  in  order  to  find  a  cus- 
tomer ;  sack  and  small-beer  were  harmless,  when  homes  were 
not  comfortable  enough  to  keep  earl  or  churl  by  the  fireside, 
and  "  out-of-doors"  was  the  proper  drawing-room  for  a  man : 
in  short,  sickness  came  in  w~ith  civilization,  indisposition  with 
immoral  habits,  fevers  with  fine-gentlemanliness,  gout  with 
greediness,  and  valetudinarianism — there  is  no  Anglo-Saxon 
word  for  that — with  what  we  falsely  call  refinement.  So, 
whatever  Bath  may  have  been  to  pampered  Romans,  who 
over-ate  themselves,  it  had  little  importance  to  the  stout, 
healthy  Middle  Ages,  and  it  was  not  till  the  reign  of  Charles 
II.  that  it  began  to  look  up.  Doctors  and  touters — the  two 
were  often  one  in  those  days — thronged  there,  and  fools  were 
found  in  plenty  to  follow  them.  At  last  the  blessed  counte- 
nance of  portly  Anne  smiled  on  the  pig-styes  of  King  Bladud. 
In  1703  she  went  to  Bath,  and  from  that  time  "people  of  dis- 
tinction" flocked  there.  The  assemblage  was  not  perhaps  very 
brilliant  or  very  refined.  The  visitors  danced  on  the  green, 
and  played  privately  at  hazard.  A  few  sharpers  found  their 
way  down  from  London ;  and  at  last  the  Duke  of  Beaufort  in- 
stituted an  M.  C.  in  the  person  of  Captain  Webster — Nash's 
predecessor — whose  main  act  of  glory  was  in  setting  up  gam- 
bling as  a  public  amusement.  It  remained  for  Nash  to  make 
the  place  what  it  afterward  was,  when  Chesterfield  could 
lounge  in  the  Pump-room  and  take  snuff  with  the  Beau ;  when 
Sarah  of  Marlborough,  Lord  and  Lady  Hervey,  the  Duke  of 
Wharton,  Congreve,  and  all  the  little-great  of  the  day  thronged 
thither  rather  to  kill  time  with  less  ceremony  than  in  London, 
than  to  cure  complaints  more  or  less  imaginary. 

The  doctors  were  only  less  numerous  than  the  sharpers ;  the 
place  was  still  uncivilized ;  the  company  smoked  and  lounged 
without  etiquette,  and  played  without  honor ;  the  place  itself 
lacked  all  comfort,  all  elegance,  and  all  cleanliness. 

Upon  this  delightful  place,  the  avatar  of  the  God  of  Eti- 
quette, personified  in  Mr.  Richard  Nash,  descended  somewhere 
about  the  year  1705,  for  the  purpose  of  regenerating  the  bar- 
barians. He  alighted  just  at  the  moment  that  one  of  the  doc- 
tors we  have  alluded  to,  in  a  fit  of  disgust  at  some  slight  on 


134 

the  part  of  the  town,  was  threatening  to  destroy  its  reputa- 
tion, or,  as  he  politely  expressed  it,  "  to  throw  a  toad  into  the 
spring."  The  Bathonians  were  alarmed  and  in  consternation, 
when  young  Nash,  who  must  have  already  distinguished  him- 
self as  a  macaroni,  stepped  forward  and  offered  to  render  the 
angry  physician  impotent.  "  We'll  charm  his  toad  out  again 
with  music,",  quoth  he.  He  evidently  thought  very  little  of 
the  watering-place,  after  his  town  experiences,  and  prepared  to 
treat  it  accordingly.  He  got  up  a  band  in  the  Pump-room, 
brought  thither  in  this  manner  the  healthy  as  well  as  the  sick, 
and  soon  raised  the  renown  of  Bath  as  a  resort  for  gayety  as 
well  as  for  mineral  waters.  In  a  word,  he  displayed  a  sur- 
prising talent  for  setting  every  thing  and  every  body  to  rights, 
and  was,  therefore,  soon  elected,  by  tacit  voting,  the  King  of 
Bath. 

He  rapidly  proved  his  qualifications  for  the  position.  First 
he  secured  his  Orphean  harmony  by  collecting  a  band  sub- 
scription, which  gave  two  guineas  a  piece  to  six  performers ; 
then  he  engaged  an  official  pumper  for  the  Pump-room ;  and 
lastly,  finding  that  the  bathers  still  gathered  under  a  booth  to 
drink  their  tea  and  talk  their  scandal,  he  induced  one  Harrison 
to  build  assembly-rooms,  guaranteeing  him  three  guineas  a 
week  to  be  raised  by  subscription. 

All  this  demanded  a  vast  amount  of  impudence  on  Mr. 
Nash's  part,  and  this  he  possessed  to  a  liberal  extent.  The 
subscriptions  flowed  in  regularly,  and  Nash  felt  his  power  in- 
crease with  his  responsibility.  So,  then,  our  minor  monarch 
resolved  to  be  despotic,  and  in  a  short  time  laid  down  laws  for 
the  guests,  which  they  obeyed  most  obsequiously.  Nash  had 
not  much  wit,  though  a  great  deal  of  assurance,  but  these  laws 
were  his  chef-d'oeuvre.  Witness  some  of  them : 

1.  "That  a  visit  of  ceremony  at  first  coming  and  another  at 
going  away,  are  all  that  are  expected  or  desired  by  ladies  of 
quality  and  fashion — except  impertinents. 

4.  "  That  no  person  takes  it  ill  that  any  one  goes  to  anoth- 
er's play  or  breakfast,  and  not  theirs — except  captious  nature. 

5.  "That  no  gentleman  give  his  ticket  for  the  balls  to  any 
but  gentlewomen.     N.B. — Unless  he  has  none  of  his  acquaint- 
ance. 

6.  "  That  gentlemen  crowding  before  the  ladies  at  the  ball, 
show  ill  manners ;  and  that  none  do  so  for  the  future  except 
such  as  respect  nobody  but  themselves. 

9.  "  That  the  younger  ladies  take  notice  how  many  eyes  ob- 
serve them.     N.B. — This  does  not  extend  to  the  Have-at-alls. 

10.  "That  all  whisperers  of  lies  and  scandal  be  taken  for 
their  authors." 


THE   BALL.  135 

Really  this  law  of  Nash's  must  have  been  repealed  some 
time  or  other  at  Bath.  Still  more  that  which  follows  : 

11.  "That  repeaters  of  such  lies  and  scandal  be  shunned  by 
all  company,  except  such  as  have  been  guilty  of  the  same 
crime." 

There  is  a  certain  amount  of  satire  in  these  Lycurgus  stat- 
utes that  shows  Nash  in  the  light  of  an  observer  of  society ; 
but,  query,  whether  any  frequenter  of  Bath  would  not  have 
devised  as  good  ? 

The  dances  of  those  days  must  have  been  somewhat  tedious. 
They  began  with  a  series  of  minuets,  in  which,  of  course,  only 
one  couple  danced  at  a  time,  the  most  distinguished  opening 
the  ball.  These  solemn  performances  lasted  about  two  hours, 
and  we  can  easily  imagine  that  the  rest  of  the  company  were 
delighted  when  the  country  dances,  which  included  every  body, 
began.  The  ball  opened  at  six  ;  the  country  dances  began  at 
eight :  at  nine  there  was  a  lull  for  the  gentlemen  to  offer  their 
partners  tea;  in  due  course  the  dances  were  resumed,  and  at 
eleven  Nash  held  up  his  hand  to  the  musicians,  and  under  no 
circumstances  was  the  ball  allowed  to  continue  after  that  hour. 
Nash  well  knew  the  value  of  early  hours  to  invalids,  and  he 
would  not  destroy  the  healing  reputation  of  Bath  for  the  sake 
of  a  little  more  pleasure.  On  one  occasion  the  Princess  Ame- 
lia implored  him  to  allow  one  dance  more.  The  despot  re- 
plied, that  his  laws  were  those  of  Lycurgus,  and  could  not  be 
abrogated  for  any  one.  By  this  we  see  that  the  M.  C.  was  al- 
ready an  autocrat  in  his  kingdom. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  supposed  that  his  majesty's  laws  were  con- 
fined to  such  merely  professional  arrangements.  Not  a  bit  of 
it;  in  a  very  short  time  his  impudence  gave  him  undenied 
righjb  of  interference  with  the  coats  and  gowns,  the  habits 
and  manners,  even  the  daily  actions  of  his  subjects,  for  so  the 
visitors  at  Bath  were  compelled  to  become.  Si  parva  licet 
componere  magnis,  we  may  admit  that  the  rise  of  Nash  and 
that  of  Napoleon  were  owing  to  similar  causes.  •  The  French 
emperor  found  France  in  a  state  of  disorder,  with  which  sensi- 
ble people  were  growing  more  and  more  disgusted ;  he  offered 
to  restore  order  and  propriety;  the  French  hailed  him,  and 
gladly  submitted  to  his  early  decrees ;  then,  when  he  had  got 
them  into  the  habit  of  obedience,  he  could  make  what  laws  he 
liked,  and  use  his  power  without  fear  of  opposition.  The  Bath 
emperor  followed  the  same  course,  and  it  may  be  asked  wheth- 
er it  does  not  demand  as  great  an  amount  of  courage,  assur- 
ance, perseverance,  and  administrative  power  to  subdue  several 
hundreds  of  English  ladies  and  gentlemen  as  to  rise  supreme 
above  some  millions  of  French  republicans.  Yet  Nash  expe- 


136  A    PUBLIC    BENEFACTOR. 

rienced  less  opposition  than  Napoleon  ;  Nash  reigned  longer, 
and  had  no  infernal  machine  prepared  to  blow  him  up. 

Every  body  was  delighted  with  the  improvements  in  the 
Pump-room,  the  balls,  the  promenades,  the  chairmen — the 
Rouge  ruffians  of  the  mimic  kingdom — whom  he  reduced  to 
submission,  and  therefore  nobody  complained  when  Emperor 
Nash  went  farther,  and  made  war  upon  the  white  aprons  of 
the  ladies  and  the  boots  of  the  gentlemen.  The  society  was 
in  fact  in  a  very  barbarous  condition  at  the  time,  and  people 
who  came  for  pleasure  liked  to  be  at  ease.  Thus  ladies  lounged 
into  the  balls  in  their  riding-hoods  or  morning  dresses,  gentle- 
men in  boots  with  their  pipes  in  their  mouths.  Such  atroci- 
ties were  intolerable  to  the  late  frequenter  of  London  society, 
and  in  his  imperious  arrogance  the  new  monarch  used  actually 
to  pull  off  the  white  aprons  of  ladies  who  entered  the  assem- 
bly-rooms with  that  degage  article,  and  throw  them  upon  the 
back  seats.  Like  the  French  emperor  again,  he  treated  high 
and  low  in  the  same  manner,  and  when  the  Duchess  of  Queens- 
berry  appeared  in  an  apron,  coolly  pulled  it  off,  and  told  her 
it  was  only  fit  for  a  maid-servant.  Her  grace  made  no  resist- 
ance. 

The  men  were  not  so  submissive ;  but  the  M.  C.  turned 
them  into  ridicule,  and  whenever  a  gentleman  appeared  at  the 
assembly-rooms  in  boots,  would  walk  up  to  him,  and  in  a  loud 
voice  remark,  "  Sir,  I  think  you  have  forgot  your  horse."  To 
complete  his  triumph,  he  put  the  offenders  into  a  song  called 
"  Trentinella's  Invitation  to  the  Assembly." 

"  Come  one  and  all, 
To  Hoyden  Hall, 

For  there's  the  assembly  this  night ; 
None  but  prude  fools, 
Mind  manners  and  rules ; 

We  Hoydens  do  decency  slight. 

"  Come  trollops  and  slatterns, 
Cockt  hats  and  white  aprons ; 

This  best  our  modesty  suits : 
For  why  should  not  we 
In  a  dress  be  as  free 

As  Hogs-Norton  squires  in  boots  ?" 

and  as  this  was  not  enough,  got  up  a  puppet-show  of  a  suffi- 
cient coarseness  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  time,  in  which  the  prac- 
tice of  wearing  boots  was  satirized. 

His  next  onslaught  was  upon  that  of  carrying  swords ;  and 
in  this  respect  Nash  became  a  public  benefactor,  for  in  those 
days,  though  Chesterfield  was  the  writer  on  etiquette,  people 
were  not  well-bred  enough  to  keep  their  tempers,  and  rivals 
for  a  lady's  hand  at  a  minuet,  or  gamblers  who  disputed  over 


LIFE   AT   BATH    IN   NASIl's   TIME  137 

their  cards,  invariably  settled  the  matter  by  an  option  be- 
tween suicide  or  murder  under  the  polite  name  of  duel.  The 
M.  C.  wisely  saw  that  these  affairs  would  bring  Bath  into  bad 
repute,  and  determined  to  supplant  the  rapier  by  the  less  dan- 
gerous cane.  In  this  he  was  for  a  long  time  opposed,  until  a 
notorious  torch-light  duel  between  two  gamblers,  of  whom  one 
was  run  through  the  body,  and  the  other,  to  show  his  contri- 
tion, turned  Quaker,  brought  his  opponents  to  a  sense  of  the 
danger  of  a  weapon  always  at  hand ;  and  henceforth  the  sword 
was  abolished. 

These  points  gained,  the  autocrat  laid  down  rules  for  the 
employment  of  the  visitors'  time,  and  these,  from  setting  the 
fashion  to  some,  soon  became  a  law  to  all.  The  first  thing  to 
be  done  was,  sensibly  enough,  the  ostensible  object  of  their 
residence  in  Bath,  the  use  of  the  baths.  At  an  early  hour 
four  lusty  chairmen  wraited  on  every  lady  to  carry  her,  wrap- 
ped in  flannels,  in 

"  A  little  black  box,  just  the  size  of  a  coffin," 

to  one  of  the  five  baths.  Here,  on  entering,  an  attendant  placed 
beside  her  a  floating  tray,  on  which  were  set  her  handkerchief, 
bouquet,  and  snuff-box,  for  our  great-great-grandmothers  did 
take  snuff;  and  here  she  found  her  friends  in  the  same  bath 
of  naturally  hot  water.  It  was,  of  course,  a  reunion  for  socie- 
ty on  the  plea  of  health ;  but  the  £arly  hours  and  exercise  se- 
cured the  latter,  whatever  the  baths  may  have  done.  A  walk 
in  the  Pump-room,  to  the  music  of  a  tolerable  band,  was  the 
next  measure ;  and  there,  of  course,  the  gentlemen  mingled 
with  the  ladies.  A  coffee-house  was  ready  to  receive  those  of 
either  sex ;  for  that  was  a  time  when  madame  and  miss  lived 
a  great  deal  in  public,  and  English  people  were  not  ashamed 
of  eating  their  breakfast  in  public  company.  These  breakfasts 
were  often  enlivened  by  concerts  paid  for  by  the  rich  and  en- 
joyed by  all. 

Supposing  the  pearcocks  now  to  be  dressed  out  and  to  have 
their  tails  spread  to  the  best  advantage,  we  next  find  some  in 
the  public  promenades,  others  in  the  reading-rooms,  the  ladies 
having  their  clubs  as  well  as  the  men ;  others  riding ;  others, 
perchance,  already  gambling.  Mankind  and  womankind  then 
dined  at  a  reasonable  hour,  and  the  evening's  amusements  be- 
gan early.  Nash  insisted  on  this,  knowing  the  value  of  health 
to  those,  and  they  were  many  at  that  time,  who  sought  Bath 
on  its  account.  The  balls  began  at  six,  and  took  place  every 
Tuesday  and  Friday,  private  balls  filling  up  the  vacant  nights. 
About  the  commencement  of  his  reign,  a  theatre  was  built,  and 
whatever  it  may  have  been,  it  afterward  became  celebrated 


138      A  COMPACT  WITH  THE  DUKE  OF  BEAUFORT. 

as  the  nursery  of  the  London  stage,  and  now,  O  tempo  passato  ! 
is  almost  abandoned.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  the  gaming- 
tables were  thronged  in  the  evenings. 

It  was  at  them  that  Nash  made  the  money  which  sufficed  to 
keep  up  his  state,  which  was  vulgarly  regal.  He  drove  about 
in  a  chariot,  flaming  with  heraldry,  and  drawn  by  six  grays, 
with  outriders,  running  footmen,  and  all  the  appendages  which 
made  an  impression  on  the  vulgar  minds  of  the  visitors  of  his 
kingdom.  His  dress  was  magnificent ;  his  gold  lace  unlimited, 
his  coats  ever  new ;  his  hat  alone  was  always  of  the  same  col- 
or— white  /  and  as  the  Emperor  Alexander  was  distinguished 
by  his  purple  tunic  and  Brummell  by  his  bow,  Emperor  Nash 
was  known  all  England  over  by  his  white  hat. 

It  is  due  to  the  King  of  Bath  to  say  that,  however  much  he 
gained,  he  always  played  fair.  He  even  patronized  young 
players,  and  after  fleecing  them,  kindly  advised  them  to  play 
no  more.  When  he  found  a  man  fixed  upon  ruining  himself, 
he  did  his  best  to  keep  him  from  that  suicidal  act.  This  was 
the  case  with  a  young  Oxonian,  to  whom  he  had  lost  money, 
and  whom  he  invited  to  supper,  in  order  to  give  him  his  pa- 
rental advice.  The  fool  would  not  take  the  Beau's  counsel, 
and  "  came  to  grief."  Even  noblemen  sought  his  "  protec- 
tion." The  Duke  of  Beaufort  entered  on  a  compact  with  him 
to  save  his  purse,  if  not  his  soul.  He  agreed  to  pay  Nash  ten 
thousand  guineas,  whenever  he  lost  the  same  amount  at  a  sit- 
ting. It  was  a  comfortable  treaty  for  our  Beau,  who  accord- 
ingly watched  his  grace.  Yet  it  must  be  said,  to  Nash's  hon- 
or, that  he  once  saved  him  from  losing  eleven  thousand,  when 
he  had  already  lost  eight,  by  reminding  him  of  his  compact. 
Such  was  play  in  those  days  !  It  is  said  that  the  duke  had 
afterward  to  pay  the  fine,  from  losing  the  stipulated  sum  at 
Newmarket. 

He  displayed  as  much  honesty  with  the  young  Lord  Towns- 
hend,  who  lost  to  him  his  whole  fortune,  his  estate,  and  even 
his  carriage  and  horses — what  madmen  are  gamblers — and 
actually  canceled  the  whole  debt,  on  condition  my  lord  should 

Eay  him  £5000  whenever  he  chose  to  claim  it.     To  Nash's 
onor  it  must  be  said  that  he  never  came  down  upon  the  no- 
bleman during  his  life.     He  claimed  the  sum  from  his  execu- 
tors, who  paid  it.     "  Honorable  to  both  parties." 

But  an  end  was  put  to  the  gaming  at  Bath  and  every  where 
else — except  in  a  royal  palace,  and  Nash  swore  that,  as  he  was 
a  king,  Bath  came  under  the  head  of  the  exceptions — by  an 
Act  of  Parliament.  Of  course  Nash  and  the  sharpers  who  fre- 
quented Bath — and  their  name  was  Legion — found  means  to 
evade  this  law  for  a  time,  by  the  invention  of  new  games.  But 


ANECDOTES    OF   NASH.  139 

tliis  could  not  last,  and  the  Beau's  fortune  went  with  the  death 
of  the  dice. 

Still,  however,  the  very  prohibition  increased  the  zest  for 
play  for  a  time,  and  Nash  soon  discovered  that  a  private  table 
was  more  profitable  than  a  public  one.  He  entered  into  an 
arrangement  with  an  old  woman  at  Bath,  in  virtue  of  which 
he  was  to  receive  a  fourth  share  of  the  profits.  This  was  prob- 
ably not  the  only  "  hell" -keeping  transaction  of  his  life,  and  he 
had  once  before  quashed  an  action  against  a  cheat  in  consider- 
ation of  a  handsome  bonus ;  and,  in  fact,  there  is  no  saying 
what  amount  of  dirty  work  Nash  would  not  have  done  for  a 
hundred  or  so,  especially  when  the  game  of  the  table  was  shut 
up  to  him.  The  man  was  immensely  fond  of  money ;  he  liked 
to  show  his  gold-laced  coat  and  superb  new  waistcoat  in  the 
Grove,  the  Abbey  Ground,  and  Bond  Street,  and  to  be  known 
as  Le  Grand  Nash.  But  on  the  other  hand,  he  did  not  love 
money  for  itself,  and  never  hoarded  it.  It  is,  indeed,  some- 
thing to  Nash's  honor,  that  he  died  poor.  He  delighted,  in 
the  poverty  of  his  mind,  to  display  his  great  thick-set  person 
to  the  most  advantage ;  he  was  as  vain  as  any  fop,  without  the 
aifectation  of  that  character,  for  he  was  always  blunt  and  free- 
spoken,  but,  as  long  as  he  had  enough  to  satisfy  his  vanity,  he 
cared  nothing  for  mere  wealth.  He  had  generosity,  though 
he  neglected  the  precept  about  the  right  hand  and  the  left,  and 
showed  some  ostentation  in  his  charities.  When  a  poor  ruin- 
ed fellow  at  his  elbow  saw  him  win  at  a  throw  £200,  and  mur- 
mured "  How  happy  that  would  make  me !"  Nash  tossed  the 
money  to  him,  and  said,  "  Go  and  be  happy  then."  Probably 
the  witless  beau  did  not  see  the  delicate  satire  implied  in  his 
speech.  It  was  only  the  triumph  of  a  gamester.  On  other 
occasions  he  collected  subscriptions  for  poor  curates  and  so 
forth,  in  the  same  spirit,  and  did  his  best  toward  founding  a 
hospital,  which  has  since  proved  of  great  value  to  those  afflict- 
ed with  rheumatic  gout.  In  the  same  spirit,  though  himself  a 
gamester,  he  often  attempted  to  win  young  and  inexperienced 
boys,  who  came  to  toss  away  their  money  at  the  rooms,  from 
seeking  their  own  ruin;  and,  on  the  whole,  there  was  some 
goodness  of  heart  in  this  gold-laced  bear. 

That  he  was  a  bear  there  are  anecdotes  enough  to  show,  and 
whether  true  or  not,  they  sufficiently  prove  what  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  man  must  have  been.  Thus,  when  a  lady,  afflicted 
with  a  curvature  of  the  spine,  told  him  that  "  She  had  come 
straight  from  London  that  day,"  Nash  replied  with  utter 
heartlessness,  "  Then,  ma'am,  you've  been  damnably  warpt  on 
the  road."  The  lady  had  her  revenge,  however,  for  meeting 
the  beau  one  day  in  the  Grove,  as  she  toddled  along  with  her 


140  "MISS   SYLVIA." 

dog,  and  being  impudently  asked  by  him,  if  she  knew  the  name 
of  Tobit's  dog,  she  answered  quickly,  "  Yes,  sir,  his  name  was 
Nash,  and  a  most  impudent  dog  he  was  too." 

It  is  due  to  Nash  to  state  that  he  made  many  attempts  to 
put  an  end  to  the  perpetual  system  of  scandal,  which  from 
some  hidden  cause  seems  always  to  be  connected  with  mineral 
springs ;  but  as  he  did  not  banish  the  old  maids,  of  course  he 
failed.  Of  the  young  ladies  and  their  reputation  he  took  a 
kind  of  paternal  care,  and  in  that  day  they  seem  to  have  need- 
ed it,  for  even  at  nineteen,  those  who  had  any  money  to  lose, 
staked  it  at  the  tables  with  as  much  gusto  as  the  wrinkled, 
puckered,  greedy-eyed  "  single  woman,"  of  a  certain  or  uncer- 
tain age.  Nash  protected  and  cautioned  them,  and  even  gave 
them  the  advantage  of  his  own  unlimited  experience.  Wit- 
ness, for  instance,  the  care  he  took  of  "  Miss  Sylvia,"  a  lovely 
heiress  who  brought  her  face  and  her  fortune  to  enslave  some 
and  enrich  others  of  the  loungers  of  Bath.  She  had  a  terrible 
love  of  hazard,  and  very  little  prudence,  so  that  Nash's  good 
offices  were  much  needed  in  the  case.  The  young  lady  soon 
became  the  standing  toast  at  all  the  clubs  and  suppers,  and 
lovers  of  her,  or  her  ducats,  crowded  round  her ;  but  though 
at  that  time  she  might  have  made  a  brilliant  match,  she  chose, 
as  young  women  will  do,  to  fix  her  affections  upon  one  of  the 
worst  men  in  Bath,  who,  naturally  enough,  did  not  return 
them.  When  this  individual,  as  a  climax  to  his  misadventures, 
was  clapt  into  prison,  the  devoted  young  creature  gave  the 
greater  part  of  her  fortune  in  order  to  pay  off"  his  debts,  and 
felling  into  disrepute  from  this  act  of  generosity,  which  was, 
of  course,  interpreted  after  a  worldly  fashion,  she  seems  to 
have  lost  her  honor  with  her  fame,  and  the  fair  Sylvia  took  a 
position  which  could  not  be  creditable  to  her.  At  last  the 
poor  girl,  weary  of  slights,  and  overcome  with  shame,  took  her 
silk  sash  and  hanged  herself.  The  terrible  event  made  a  nine 
hours' — not  nine  days' — sensation  in  Bath,  which  was  too  busy 
with  mains  and  aces  to  care  about  the  fate  of  one  who  had  long 
sunk  out  of  its  circles. 

When  Nash  reached  the  zenith  of  his  power,  the  adulation 
he  received  was  somewhat  of  a  parody  on  the  flattery  of  court- 
iers. True,  he  had  his  bards  from  Grub  Street  who  sang  his 
praises,  and  he  had  letters  to  show  from  Sarah  of  Marlborough 
and  others  of  that  calibre,  but  his  chief  worshipers  were  cooks, 
musicians,  and  even  imprisoned  highwaymen — one  of  whom 
disclosed  the  secrets  of  the  craft  to  him — who  wrote  him  ded- 
ications, letters,  poems  and  what  not.  The  good  city  of  Bath 
set  up  his  statue,  and  did  Newton  and  Pope*  the  great  honor 

*  A  full-length  statue  of  Nash  was  placed  between  busts  of  Newton  and 
Pope. 


N  ASH'S  SUN  SETTING.  141 

of  playing  "  supporters"  to  him,  which  elicited  from  Chester- 
field some  well-known  lines : 

"  This  statue  placed  the  busts  between 

Adds  to  the  satire  strength ; 
Wisdom  and  Wit  are  little  seen, 
But  Folly  at  full  length." 

Meanwhile  his  private  character  was  none  of  the  best.  He 
had  in  early  life  had  one  attachment,  besides  that  unfortunate 
affair  for  which  his  friends  had  removed  him  from  Oxford,  and 
in  that  had  behaved  with  great  magnanimity.  The  young 
lady  had  honestly  told  him  that  he  had  a  rival ;  the  Beau  sent 
for  him,  settled  on  her  a  fortune  equal  to  that  her  father  in- 
tended for  her,  and  himself  presented  her  to  the  favored  suitor. 
Now,  however,  he  seems  to  have  given  up  all  thoughts  of 
matrimony,  and  gave  himself  up  to  mistresses,  who  cared  more 
for  his  gold  than  for  himself.  It  was  an  awkward  conclusion 
to  Nash's  generous  act  in  that  one  case,  that  before  a  year 
had  passed,  the  bride  ran  away  with  her  husband's  footman ; 
yet,  though  it  disgusted  him  with  ladies,  it  does  not  seem  to 
have  cured  him  of  his  attachment  to  the  sex  in  general. 

In  the  height  of  his  glory  Nash  was  never  ashamed  of  re- 
ceiving adulation.  He  was  as  fond  of  flattery  as  Le  Grand 
Monarque — and  he  paid  for  it  too — whether  it  came  from  a 
prince  or  a  chairman.  Every  day  brought  him  some  fresh 
meed  of  praise  in  prose  or  verse,  and  Nash  was  always  de- 
lighted. 

But  his  sun  was  to  set  in  time.  His  fortune  went  when 
gaming  was  put  down,  for  he  had  no  other  means  of  subsist- 
ence. Yet  he  lived  on  :  he  had  not  the  good  sense  to  die ;  and 
he  reached  the  patriarchal  of  eighty-seven.  In  his  old  age  he 
was  not  only  garrulous,  but  bragging :  he  told  stories  of  his 
exploits  in  which  he,  Mr.  Richard  Nash,  came  out  as  the  first 
swordsman,  swimmer,  leaper,  and  what  not.  But  by  this  time 
people  began  to  doubt  Mr.  Richard  Nash's  long  bow,  and  the 
yarns  he  spun  were  listened  to  with  impatience.  He  grew 
rude  and  testy  in  his  old  age ;  suspected  Quin,  the  actor,  who 
was  living  at  Bath,  of  an  intention  to  supplant  him;  made 
coarse,  impertinent  repartees  to  the  visitors  at  that  city,  and 
in  general  raised  up  a  dislike  to  himself.  Yet,  as  other  mon- 
archs  have  had  their  eulogists  in  sober  mind,  Nash  had  his  in 
one  of  the  most  depraved ;  and  Anstey,  the  low-minded  author 
of  "  The  New  Bath  Guide,"  panegyrized  him  a  short  time  after 
his  death  in  the  following  verses : 

"Yet  here  no  confusion — no  tumult  is  known ; 
Fair  order  and  beauty  establish  their  throne ; 


142  A   PANEGYEIC. 

For  order,  and  beauty,  and  just  regulation, 

Support  all  the  works  of  this  ample  creation. 

For  this,  in  compassion  to  mortals  below, 

The  gods,  their  peculiar  favor  to  show, 

Sent  Hermes  to  Bath  in  the  shape  of  a  beau  : 

That  grandson  of  Atlas  came  down  from  above 

To  bless  all  the  regions  of  pleasure  and  love  ; 

To  lead  the  fair  nymph  thro'  the  various  maze, 

Bright  beauty  to  marshal,  his  glory  and  praise ; 

To  govern,  improve,  and  adorn  the  gay  scene, 

By  the  Graces  instructed,  and  Cyprian  queen : 

As  when  in  a  garden  delightful  and  gay, 

Where  Flora  is  wont  all  her  charms  to  display, 

The  sweet  hyacinthus  with  pleasure  we  view, 

Contend  with  narcissus  in  delicate  hue ; 

The  gard'ner,  industrious,  trims  out  his  border, 

Puts  each  odoriferous  plant  in  its  order  ; 

The  myrtle  he  ranges,  the  rose  and  the  lily, 

With  iris,  and  crocus,  and  daffa-down-dilly ; 

Sweet  peas  and  sweet  oranges  all  he  disposes, 

At  once  to  regale  both  your  eyes  and  your  noses. 

Long  reign'd  the  great  Nash,  this  omnipotent  lord, 

Respected  by  youth,  and  by  parents  ador'd ; 

For  him  not  enough  at  a  ball  to  preside, 

The  unwary  and  beautiful  nymph  would  he  guide ; 

Oft  tell  her  a  tale,  how  the  credulous  maid 

By  man,  by  perfidious  man,  is  betrayed ; 

Taught  Charity's  hand  to  relieve  the  distress'd, 

While  tears  have  his  tender  compassion  express'd , 

But  alas  !  he  is  gone,  and  the  city  can  tell 

How  in  years  and  in  glory  lamented  he  fell. 

Him  mourn'd  all  the  Dryads  on  Claverton's  mount ; 

Him  Avon  deplor'd,  him  the  nymph  of  the  fount, 

The  crystalline  streams. 

Then  perish  his  picture — his  statue  decay — 

A  tribute  more  lasting  the  Muses  shall  pay. 

If  true,  what  philosophers  all  will  assure  us, 

Who  dissent  from  the  doctrine  of  great  Epicurus, 

That  the  spirit's  immortal  (as  poets  allow) : 

In  reward  of  his  labors,  his  virtue  and  pains, 

He  is  footing  it  now  in  the  Elysian  plains, 

Indulg'd,  as  a  token  of  Proserpine's  favor, 

To  preside  at  her  balls  in  a  cream-color'd  beaver. 

Then  peace  to  his  ashes — our  grief  be  suppress'd, 

Since  we  find  such  a  phoenix  has  sprung  from  his  nest; 

Kind  Heaven  has  sent  us  another  professor, 

Who  follows  the  steps  of  his  great  predecessor." 

The  end  of  the  Bath  Beau  was  somewhat  less  tragical  than 
that  of  his  London  successor — Brummell.  Nash,  in  his  old 
age  and  poverty,  hung  about  the  clubs  and  supper-tables,  but- 
ton-holed youngsters,  who  thought  him  a  bore,  spun  his  long 
yarns,  and  tried  to  insist  on  obsolete  fashions,  when  near  the 
end  of  his  life's  century. 

The  clergy  took  more  care  of  him  than  the  youngsters. 


NASH'S  FUNERAL.  143 

They  heard  that  Nash  was  an  octogenarian,  and  likely  to  die  in 
his  sins,  and  resolved  to  do  their  best  to  shrive  him.  Worthy 
and  well-meaning  men  accordingly  wrote  him  long  letters, 
which,  if  he  read,  the  Beau  must  have  had  more  patience  than 
we  can  lay  claim  to.  There  was,  however,  a  great  deal  of 
hell-fire  in  these  effusions,  and  there  was  nothing  which  Nash 
dreaded  so  much.  As  long  as  there  was  immediate  fear  of 
death,  he  was  pious  and  humble ;  the  moment  the  fear  had 
passed,  he  was  jovial  and  indifferent  again.  His  especial  de- 
light, to  the  last,  seems  to  have  been  swearing  against  the  doc- 
tors, whom  he  treated  like  the  individual  in  Anstey's  "Bath 
Guide,"  shying  their  medicines  out  of  window  upon  their  own 
heads.  But  the  wary  old  Beckoner  called  him  in,  in  due  time, 
with  his  broken,  empty-chested  voice ;  and  Nash  was  forced 
to  obey.  Death  claimed  him — and  much  good  it  got  of  him — 
in  1761,  at  the  age  of  eighty-seven :  there  are  few  beaux  who 
lived  so  long. 

Thus  ended  a  life,  of  which  the  moral  lay,  so  to  speak,  out 
of  it.  The  worthies  of  Bath  were  true  to  the  worship  of 
Folly,  whom  Anstey  so  well,  though  indelicately,  describes  as 
there  conceiving  Fashion;  and  though  Nash,  old,  slovenly, 
disrespected,  had  long  ceased  to  be  either  beau  or  monarch, 
treated  his  huge,  unlovely  corpse  with  the  honor  due  to  the 
great — or  little.  His  funeral  was  as  glorious  as  that  of  any 
hero,  and  far  more  showy,  though  much  less  solemn,  than  the 
burial  of  Sir  John  Moore.  Perhaps  for  a  bit  of  prose  flum- 
mery, by  way  of  contrast  to  Wolfe's  lines  on  the  latter  event, 
there  is  little  to  equal  the  account  in  a  contemporary  paper : 
"Sorrow  sate  upon  every  face,  and  even  children  lisped  that 
their  sovereign  was  no  more.  The  awfulness  of  the  solemnity 
made  the  deepest  impression  on  the  minds  of  the  distressed 
inhabitants.  The  peasant  discontinued  his  toil,  the  ox  rested 
from  the  plow,  all  nature  seemed  to  sympathize  with  their 
loss,  and  the  muffled  bells  rung  a  peal  of  bob-major." 

The  Beau  left  little  behind  him,  and  that  little  not  worth 
much,  even  including  his  renown.  Most  of  the  presents  which 
fools  or  flatterers  had  made  him,  had  long  since  been  sent  chez 
ma  tante;  a  few  trinkets  and  pictures,  and  a  few  books,  which 
probably  he  had  never  read,  constituted  his  little  store.* 

Bath  and  Tunbridge — for  he  had  annexed  that  lesser  king- 
dom to  his  own — had  reason  to  mourn  him,  for  he  had  almost 
made  them  what  they  were;  but  the  country  has  not  much 
cause  to  thank  the  upholder  of  gaming,  the  institutor  of  silly 

*  In  the  "Annual  Kegister"  (vol.  v.  p.  37),  it  is  stated  that  a  pension  of 
ten  guineas  a  month  was  paid  to  Nash  during  the  latter  years  of  his  life  by 
the  Corporation  of  Bath. 


144  HIS   CHAKACTEEISTICS. 

fashion,  and  the  high-priest  of  folly.  Yet  Nash  was  free  from 
many  vices  we  should  expect  to  find  in  such  a  man.  He  did 
not  drink,  for  instance;  one  glass  of  wine,  and  a  moderate 
quantity  of  small  beer,  being  his  allowance  for  dinner.  He 
was  early  in  his  hours,  and  made  others  sensible  in  theirs. 
He  was  generous  and  charitable  when  he  had  the  money ;  and 
when  he  had  not  he  took  care  to  make  his  subjects  subscribe 
it.  In  a  word,  there  have  been  worse  men  and  greater  fools ; 
and  we  may  again  ask  whether  those  who  obeyed  and  flatter- 
ed him  were  not  more  contemptible  than  Beau  Nash  himself. 
So  much  for  the  powers  of  impudence  and  a  fine  coat ! 


PHILIP,  DUKE  OF  WHARTON, 

IF  an  illustration  were  wanted  of  that  character  unstable  as 
water  which  shall  not  excel,  this  duke  would  at  once  supply 
it :  if  we  had  to  warn  genius  against  self-indulgence — some 
clever  boy  against  extravagance — some  poet  against  the  bot- 
tle— this  is  the  "  shocking  example"  we  should  select :  if  we 
wished  to  show  how  the  most  splendid  talents,  the  greatest 
wealth,  the  most  careful  education,  the  most  unusual  advan- 
tages, may  all  prove  useless  to  a  man  who  is  too  vain  or  too 
frivolous  to  use  them  properly,  it  is  enough  to  cite  that  no- 
bleman, whose  acts  gained  for  him  the  name  of  the  infamous 
Duke  of  Wharton.  Never  was  character  more  mercurial,  or 
life  more  unsettled  than  his ;  never,  perhaps,  were  more  changes 
crowded  into  a  fewer  number  of  years,  more  fame  and  infamy 
gathered  into  so  short  a  space.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  when 
Pope  wanted  a  man  to  hold  up  to  the  scorn  of  the  world,  as  a 
sample  of  wasted  abilities,  it  was  Wharton  that  he  chose,  and 
his  lines  rise  in  grandeur  in  proportion  to  the  vileness  of  the 
theme : 

"Wharton,  the  scorn  and  wonder  of  our  days, 

Whose  ruling  passion  was  a  love  of  praise. 

Born  with  whate'er  could  win  it  from  the  wise, 

Women  and  fools  must  like  him  or  he  dies ; 

Though  raptured  senates  hung  on  all  lie  spoke, 

The  club  must  hail  him  master  of  the  joke. 

Shall  parts  so  various  aim  at  nothing  new  ? 

He'll  shine  a  Tully  and  a  Wilmot  too. 
*  *  *  # 

Thus  with  each  gift  of  nature  and  of  art, 

And  wanting  nothing  but  an  honest  heart ; 

Grown  all  to  all,  from  no  one  vice  exempt, 

And  most  contemptible,  to  shun  contempt ; 

His  passion  still,  to  covet  general  praise, 

His  life  to  forfeit  it  a  thousand  ways ; 

A  constant  bounty  which  no  friend  has  made ; 

An  angel  tongue  which  no  man  can  persuade ; 

A  fool  with  more  of  wit  than  all  mankind  ; 

Too  rash  for  thought,  for  action  too  refined," 
And  then  those  memorable  lines — 

"A  tyrant  to  the  wife  his  heart  approved, 

A  rebel  to  the  very  king  he  loved ; 

He  dies,  sad  outcast  of  each  church  and  state  5 

And,  harder  still !  flagitious,  yet  not  great." 

Though  it  may  be  doubted  if  the  "  lust  of  praise5'  was  the 

G 


146          WHARTON'S  ANCESTORS. — HIS  EARLY  YEARS. 

cause  of  his  eccentricities,  so  much  as  an  utter  restlessness 
and  instability  of  character,  Pope's  description  is  sufficiently 
correct,  and  will  prepare  us  for  one  of  the  most  disappointing 
lives  we  could  well  have  to  read. 

Philip,  Duke  of  Wharton,  was  one  of  those  men  of  whom 
an  Irishman  would  say,  that  they  were  fortunate  before  they 
were  born.  His  ancestors  bequeathed  him  a  name  that  stood 
high  in  England  for  bravery  and  excellence.  The  first  of  the 
house,  Sir  Thomas  Whartou,  had  won  his  peerage  from  Henry 
VIII.  for  routing  some  15,000  Scots  with  500  men,  and  other 
gallant  deeds.  From  his  father  the  marquis  he  inherited  much 
of  his  talents ;  but  for  the  heroism  of  the  former,  he  seems  to 
have  received  it  only  in  the  extravagant  form  of  foolhardiness. 
Walpole  remembered,  but  could  not-  tell  where,  a  ballad  he 
wrote  on  being  arrested  by  the  guard  in  St.  James's  Park,  for 
singing  the  Jacobite  song,  "The  King  shall  have  his  own 
again,"  and  quotes  two  lines  to  show  that  he  was  not  ashamed 
of  his  own  cowardice  on  the  occasion : 

"  The  duke  he  drew  out  half  his  sword — 
The  guard  drew  out  the  rest." 

At  the  siege  of  Gibraltar,  where  he  took  up  arms  against 
his  own  king  and  country,  he  is  said  to  have  gone  alone  one 
night  to  the  very  walls  of  the  town,  and  challenged  the  out- 
post. They  asked  him  who  he  was,  and  when  he  replied, 
openly  enough,  "The  Duke  of  Wharton,"  they  actually  allow- 
ed him  to  return  without  either  firing  on  or  capturing  him. 
The  story  seems  somewhat  apocryphal,  but  it  is  quite  possible 
that  the  English  soldiers  may  have  refrained  from  violence  to 
a  well-known  madcap  nobleman  of  their  own  nation. 

Philip,  son  of  the  Marquis  of  Wharton,  at  that  time  only  a 
baron,  was  born  in  the  last  year  but  one  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  came  into  the  world  endowed  with  every  quality 
which  might  have  made  a  great  man,  if  he  had  only  added 
wisdom  to  them.  His  father  wished  to  make  him  a  brilliant 
statesman,  and,  to  have  a  better  chance  of  doing  so,  kept  him 
at  home,  and  had  him  educated  under  his  own  eye.  He  seems 
to  have  easily  and  rapidly  acquired  a  knowledge  of  classical 
languages ;  and  his  memory  was  so  keen  that  when  a  boy  of 
thirteen  he  could  repeat  the  greater  part  of  the  "^Eneid"  and 
of  Horace  by  heart.  His  father's  keen  perception  did  not  al- 
low him  to  stop  at  classics ;  and  he  wisely  prepared  him  for 
the  career  to  which  he  was  destined  by  the  study  of  history, 
ancient  and  modern,  and  of  English  literature,  and  by  teach- 
ing him,  even  at  that  early  age,  the  art  of  thinking  and  writ- 
ing on  any  given  subject,  by  proposing  themes  for  essays. 
There  is  certainly  no  surer  mode  of  developing  the  reflective 


MARRIAGE   AT   SIXTEEN.  147 

\ 

and  reasoning  powers  of  the  mind ;  and  the  boy  progressed 
with  a  rapidity  which  was  almost  alarming.  Oratory,  too, 
was  of  course  cultivated,  and  to  this  end  the  young  nobleman 
was  made  to  recite  before  a  small  audience  passages  from 
Shakspeare,  and  even  speeches  which  had  been  delivered  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  and  we  may  be  certain  he  showed  no 
bashfulness  in  this  display. 

He  was  precocious  beyond  measure,  and  at  sixteen  was  a 
man.  His  first  act  of  folly — or,  perhaps,  he  thought  of  man- 
hood— came  off  at  this  early  age.  He  fell  in  love  with  the 
daughter  of  a  Major  General  Holmes ;  and  though  there  is 
nothing  extraordinary  in  that,  for  nine  tenths  of  us  have  been 
love-mad  at  as  early  an  age,  he  did  what  fortunately  very  few 
do  in  a  first  love  affair,  he  married  the  adored  one.  Early 
marriages  are  often  extolled,  and  justly  enough,  as  safeguards 
against  profligate  habits,  but  this  one  seems  to  have  had  the 
contrary  effect  on  young  Philip.  His  wife  was  in  every  sense 
too  good  for  him :  he  was  madly  in  love  with  her  at  first,  but 
soon  shamefully  and  openly  faithless.  Pope's  line, 

"  A  tyrant  to  the  wife  his  heart  approved," 

requires  explanation  here.  It  is  said  that  she  did  not  present 
her  boy-husband  with  a  son  for  three  years  after  their  mar- 
riage, and  on  this  child  he  set  great  value  and  great  hopes. 
About  that  time  he  left  his  wife  in  the  country,  intending  to 
amuse  himself  in  town,  and  ordered  her  to  remain  behind  with 
the  child.  The  poor  deserted  woman  well  knew  what  was  the 
real  object  of  this  journey,  and  could  not  endure  the  separation. 
In  the  hope  of  keeping  her  young  husband  out  of  harm,  and 
none  the  less  because  she  loved  him  very  tenderly,  she  follow- 
ed him  soon  after,  taking  the  little  Marquis  of  Malmsbury,  as 
the  young  live  branch  was  called,  with  her.  The  duke  was,  of 
course,  disgusted,  but  his  anger  was  turned  into  hatred,  when 
the  child,  which  he  had  hoped  to  make  his  heir  and  successor, 
caught  in  town  the  small-pox,  and  died  in  infancy.  He  was 
furious  with  his  wife,  refused  to  see  her  for  a  long  time,  and 
treated  her  with  unrelenting  coldness. 

The  early  marriage  was  much  to  the  distaste  of  Philip's  fa- 
ther, who  had  been  lately  made  a  marquis,  and  who  hoped  to 
arrange  a  very  grand  "  alliance"  for  his  petted  son.  He  was, 
in  fact,  so  much  grieved  by  it,  that  he  was  fool  enough  to  die 
of  it  in  1715,  and  the  marchioness  survived  him  only  about  a 
year,  being  no  Jess  disgusted  with  the  licentiousness  which  she 
already  discovered  in  her  Young  Hopeful. 

She  did  what  she  could  to  set  him  right,  and  the  young 
married  man  was  shipped  off  with  a  tutor,  a  French  Hugue- 


148  WHAKTON   TAKES   LEAVE    OF    HIS   TUTOE. 

not,  who  was  to  take  him  to  Geneva  to  be  educated  as  a  Prot- 
estant and  a  Whig.  The  young  scamp  declined  to  be  either. 
He  was  taken,  by  way  of  seeing  the  world,  to  the  petty  courts 
of  Germany,  and  of  course  to  that  of  Hanover,  which  had  kind- 
ly sent  us  the  worst  family  that  ever  disgraced  the  English 
throne,  and  by  the  various  princes  and  grand  dukes  received 
with  all  the  honors  due  to  a  young  British  nobleman. 

The  tutor  and  his  charge  settled  at  last  at  Geneva,  and  my 
young  Lord  amused  himself  with  tormenting  his  strict  guardian. 
Walpole  tells  us  that  he  once  roused  him  out  of  bed  only  to  bor- 
row a  pin.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  led  the  worthy  man  a  sad 
life  of  it ;  and  to  put  a  climax  to  his  conduct,  ran  away  from 
him  at  last,  leaving  with  him,  by  way  of  hostage,  a  young 
bear-cub — probably  quite  as  tame  as  himself— which  he  had 
picked  up  somewhere,  and  grown  very  fond  of — birds  of  a 
feather,  seemingly — with  a  message,  which  showed  more  wit 
than  good-nature,  to  this  effect :  "  Being  no  longer  able  to 
bear  with  your  ill  usage,  I  think  proper  to  be  gone  from  you ; 
however,  that  you  may  not  want  company,  I  have  left  you  the 
bear,  as  the  most  suitable  companion  in  the  world  that  could 
be  picked  out  for  you." 

The  tutor  had  to  console  himself  with  a  tu  quogue,  for  the 
young  scapegrace  had  found  his  way  to  Lyons  in  October, 
1716,  and  then  did  the  very  thing  his  father's  son  should  not 
have  done.  The  Chevalier  de  St.  George,  the  Old  Pretender, 
James  III.,  or  by  whatever  other  alias  you  prefer  to  call  him, 
having  failed  in  the  attempt  "  to  have  his  own  again"  in  the 
preceding  year,  was  then  holding  high  court  in  high  dudgeon 
at  Avignon.  Any  adherent  would,  of  course,  be  welcomed 
with  open  arms ;  and  when  the  young  marquis  wrote  to  him 
to  offer  his  allegiance,  sending  with  his  letter  a  fine  entire 
horse  as  a  peace  offering,  he  was  warmly  responded  to.  A 
person  of  rank  was  at  once  dispatched  to  bring  the  youth  to 
the  ex-regal  court ;  he  was  welcomed  with  much  enthusiasm, 
and  the  empty  title  of  Duke  of  Northumberland  at  once,  most 
kindly,  conferred  on  him.  However,  the  young  marquis  does 
not  seem  to  have  goute  the  exile's  court,  for  he  staid  there 
one  day  only,  and  returning  to  Lyons,  set  off  to  enjoy  himself 
at  Paris.  With  much  wit,  no  prudence,  and  a  plentiful  sup- 
ply of  money,  which  he  threw  about  with  the  recklessness  of 
a  boy  just  escaped  from  his  tutor,  he  could  not  fail  to  succeed 
in  that  capital;  and,  accordingly,  the  English  received  him 
with  open  arms.  Even  the  embassador,  Lord  Stair,  though 
he  had  heard  rumors  of  his  wild  doings,  invited  him  repeat- 
edly to  dinner,  and  did  his  best,  by  advice  and  warning,  to 
keep  him  out  of  harm's  way.  Young  Philip  had  a  horror  of 


WHARTON'S  ROGUISH  PRESENT. 


FROLICS    AT   PARIS.  151 

preceptors,  paid  or  gratuitous,  and  treated  the  plenipotentiary 
with  the  same  coolness  as  he  had  served  the  Huguenot  tutor. 
When  the  former,  praising  the  late  marquis,  expressed — by 
way  of  a  slight  hint — a  hope  "  that  he  would  follow  so  illus- 
trious an  example  of  fidelity  to  his  prince,  and  affection  to  his 
country,  by  treading  in  the  same  steps,"  the  young  scamp  re- 
plied, cleverly  enough,  "That  he  thanked  his  excellency  for 
his  good  advice,  and  as  his  excellency  had  also  a  worthy  and 
deserving  father,  he  hoped  he  would  likewise  copy  so  bright 
an  example,  and  tread  in  all  his  steps ;"  the  pertness  of  which 
was  pertinent  enough,  for  old  Lord  Stair  had  taken  a  dis- 
graceful part  against  his  sovereign  in  the  massacre  of  Glencoe. 

His  frolics  at  Paris  were  of  the  most  reckless  character  for 
a  young  nobleman.  At  the  embassador's  own  table  he  would 
occasionally  send  a  servant  to  some  one  of  the  guests,  to  ask 
him  to  join  in  the  Old  Chevalier's  health,  though  it  was  almost 
treason  at  that  time  to  mention  his  name  even.  And  again, 
when  the  windows  at  the  embassy  had  been  broken  by  a 
young  English  Jacobite,  who  was  forthwith  committed  to  Fort 
1'Eveque,  the  harebrained  marquis  proposed,  out  of  revenge, 
to  break  them  a  second  time,  and  only  abandoned  the  project 
because  he  could  get  no  one  to  join  him  in  it.  Lord  Stah\ 
however,  had  too  much  sense  to  be  offended  at  the  follies  of  a 
boy  of  seventeen,  even  though  that  boy  was  the  representa- 
tive of  a  great  English  family ;  he,  probably,  thought  it  would 
be  better  to  recall  him  to  his  allegiance  by  kindness  and  ad- 
vice, than,  by  resenting  his  behavior,  to  drive  him  irrevocably 
to  the  opposite  party ;  but  he  was  doubtless  considerably  re- 
lieved when,  after  leading  a  wild  life  in  the  capital  of  France, 
spending  his  money  lavishly,  and  doing  precisely  every  thing 
which  a  young  English  nobleman  ought  not  to  do,  my  lord 
marquis  took  his  departure  in  December,  1716. 

The  political  education  he  had  received  now  made  the  un- 
stable youth  ready  and  anxious  to  shine  in  the  State ;  but  be- 
ing yet  under  age,  he  could  not,  of  course,  take  his  seat  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  Perhaps  he  was  conscious  of  his  own  won- 
derful abilities ;  perhaps,  as  Pope  declares,  he  was  thirsting  for 
praise,  and  wished  to  display  them ;  certainly  he  was  itching 
to  become  an  orator,  and  as  he  could  not  sit  in  an  English 
Parliament,  he  remembered  that  he  had  a  peerage  in  Ireland, 
as  Earl  of  Rathfernhame  and  Marquis  of  Catherlogh,  and  off 
he  set  to  see  if  the  Milesians  would  stand  upon  somewhat  less 
ceremony.  He  was  not  disappointed  there.  "His  brilliant 
parts,"  we  are  told  by  contemporary  writers,  but  rather,  we 
should  think,  his  reputation  for  wit  and  eccentricity,  "  found 
favor  in  the  eyes  of  Hibernian  quicksilvers,  and  in  spite  of  his 
years,  he  was  admitted  to  the  Irish  House  of  Lords." 


152  ZEAL  FOB  THE  ORANGE  CAUSE. 

When  a  friend  had  reproached  him,  before  he  left  France, 
with  infidelity  to  the  principles  so  long  espoused  by  his  fami- 
ly, he  is  reported  to  have  replied,  characteristically  enough, 
that  "  he  had  pawned  his  principles  to  Gordon,  the  Chevalier's 
banker,  for  a  considerable  sum,  and,  till  he  could  repay  him, 
he  must  be  a  Jacobite ;  but  when  that  was  done,  he  would 
again  return  to  the  Whigs."  It  is  as  likely  as  not  that  he  bor- 
rowed from  Gordon  on  the  strength  of  the  Chevalier's  favor,  for 
though  a  marquis  in  his  own  right,  he  was  even  at  this  period 
always  in  want  of  cash ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  speech, 
exhibiting  the  grossest  want  of  any  sense  of  honor,  is  in  thor- 
ough keeping  with  his  after-life.  But  whether  he  paid  Gordon 
on  his  return  to  England — which  is  highly  improbable — or 
whether  he  had  not  honor  enough  to  keep  his  compact — which 
is  extremely  likely — there  is  no  doubt  that  my  lord  marquis 
began,  at  this  period,  to  qualify  himself  for  the  post  of  parish 
weathercock  to  St.  Stephens. 

His  early  defection  to  a  man  who,  whether  rightful  heir  or 
not,  had  that  of  romance  in  his  history  which  is  even  now  suf- 
ficient to  make  our  young  ladies  "thorough  Jacobites"  at 
heart,  was  easily  to  be  excused,  on  the  plea  of  youth  and  high 
spirit.  The  same  excuse  does  not  explain  his  rapid  return  "to 
Whiggery — in  which  there  is  no  romance  at  all — the  moment 
he  took  his  seat  in  the  Irish  House  of  Lords.  There  is  only 
one  way  to  explain  the  zeal  with  which  he  now  advocated  the 
Orange  cause:  he  must  have  been  either  a  very  designing 
knave,  or  a  very  unprincipled  fool.  As  he  gained  nothing  by 
the  change  but  a  dukedom  for  which  he  did  not  care,  and  as 
he  cared  for  little  else  that  the  government  could  give  him,  we 
may  acquit  him  of  any  very  deep  motives.  On  the  other  hand, 
his  life  and  some  of  his  letters  show  that,  with  a  vast  amount 
of  bravado,  he  was  sufficiently  a  coward.  When  supplicated, 
he  was  always  obstinate ;  when  neglected,  always  supplicant. 
Now  it  required  some  courage  in  those  days  to  be  a  Jacobite. 
Perhaps  he  cared  for  nothing  but  to  astonish  and  disgust  ev- 
ery body  with  the  facility  with  which  he  could  turn  his  coat, 
as  a  hippodromist  does  with  the  ease  with  which  he  changes 
his  costume.  He  was  a  boy  and  a  peer,  and  he  would  make 
pretty  play  of  his  position.  He  had  considerable  talents,  and 
now,  as  he  sat  in  the  Irish  House,  devoted  them  entirely  to  the 
support  of  the  government. 

For  the  next  four  years  he  was  employed,  on  the  one  hand 
in  political,  on  the  other  in  profligate,  life.  He  shone  in  both ; 
and  was  no  less  admired,  by  the  wits  of  those  days,  for  his 
speeches,  his  arguments,  and  his  zeal,  than  for  the  utter  disre- 
gard of  public  decency  he  displayed  in  his  vices.  Such  a 


THE   TRIAL    OF    ATTERBURY.  153 

promising  youth,  adhering  to  the  government,  merited  some 
mark  of  its  esteem,  and  accordingly,  before  attaining  the  age 
of  twenty-one,  he  was  raised  to  a  dukedom.  Being  of  age,  he 
took  his  seat  in  the  English  House  of  Lords,  and  had  not  been 
long  there  before  he  again  turned  coat,  and  came  out  in  the 
light  of  a  Jacobite  hero.  It  was  now  that  he  gathered  most 
of  his  laurels. 

The  Hanoverian  monarch  had  been  on  the  English  throne 
some  six  years.  Had  the  Chevalier's  attempt  occurred  at  this 
period,  it  may  be  doubted  if  it  would  not  have  been  successful. 
The  "  Old  Pretender"  came  too  soon,  the  "Young  Pretender" 
too  late.  At  the  period  of  the  first  attempt,  the  public  had 
had  no  time  to  contrast  Stuarts  and  Guelphs :  at  that  of  the 
second,  they  had  forgotten  the  one  and  grown  accustomed  to 
the  other ;  but  at  the  moment  when  our  young  duke  appeared 
on  the  boards  of  the  senate,  the  vices  of  the  Hanoverians  were 
beginning  to  draw  down  on  them  the  contempt  of  the  educa- 
ted and  the  ridicule  of  the  vulgar ;  and  perhaps  no  moment 
could  have  been  more  favorable  for  advocating  a  restoration 
of  the  Stuarts.  If  Wharton  had  had  as  much  energy  and  con- 
sistency as  he  had  talent  and  impudence,  he  might  have  done 
much  toward  that  desirable,  or  undesirable,  end. 

The  grand  question  at  this  time  before  the  House  was  the 
trial  of  Atterbury,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  demanded  by  Sir  Rob- 
ert Walpole.  The  man  had  a  spirit  almost  as  restless  as  his 
defender.  The  son  of  a  man  who  might  have  been  the  orig- 
inal of  the  Vicar  of  Bray,  he  was  very  little  of  a  poet,  less  of  a 
priest,  but  a  great  deal  of  a  politician.  He  was  born  in  1662, 
so  that  at  this  time  he  must  have  been  nearly  sixty  years  old. 
He  had  had  by  no  means  a  hard  life  of  it,  for  family  interest, 
together  with  eminent  talents,  procured  him  one  appointment 
after  another,  till  he  reached  the  bench,  at  the  age  of  fifty-one, 
in  the  reign  of  Anne.  He  had  already  distinguished  himself 
in  several  ways,  most,  perhaps,  by  controversies  with  Hoadly, 
and  by  sundry  high-church  motions.  But  after  his  elevation, 
he  displayed  his  principles  more  boldly,  refused  to  sign  the 
Declaration  of  the  Bishops,  which  was  somewhat  servilely 
made  to  assure  George  the  First  of  the  fidelity  of  the  Estab- 
lished Church,  suspended  the  curate  of  Gravesend  for  three 
years  because  he  allowed  the  Dutch  to  have  a  service  perform- 
ed in  his  church,  and  even,  it  is  said,  on  the  death  of  Anne, 
offered  to  proclaim  King  James  III.,  and  head  a  procession 
himself  in  his  lawn  sleeves.  The  end  of  this  and  other  vaga- 
ries was,  that  in  1722,  the  Government  sent  him  to  the  Tower, 
on  suspicion  of  being  connected  with  a  plot  in  favor  of  the  Old 
Chevalier.  The  case  excited  no  little  attention,  for  it  was 

G2 


154  WHAETON'S  DEFENSE  OP  THE  BISHOP. 

long  since  a  bishop  had  been  charged  with  high  treason ;  it 
was  added  that  his  jailers  used  him  rudely ;  and,  in  short,  pub- 
lic sympathy  rather  went  along  with  him  for  a  time.  In 
March,  1723,  a  bill  was  presented  to  the  Commons,  for  "in- 
flicting certain  pains  and  penalties  on  Francis,  Lord  Bishop  of 
Rochester,"  and  it  passed  that  House  in  April ;  but  when  car- 
ried up  to  the  Lords,  a  defense  was  resolved  on.  The  bill 
was  read  a  third  time  on  May  15th,  and  on  that  occasion  the 
Duke  of  Wharton,  then  only  twenty-four  years  old,  rose  and 
delivered  a  speech  in  favor  of  the  bishop.  This  oration  far 
more  resembled  that  of  a  lawyer  summing  up  the  evidence 
than  of  a  parliamentary  orator  enlarging  on  the  general  issue. 
It  was  remarkable  for  the  clearness  of  its  argument,  the  won- 
derful memory  of  facts  it  displayed,  and  the  ease  and  rapidity 
with  which  it  annihilated  the  testimony  of  various  witnesses 
examined  before  the  House.  It  was  mild  and  moderate,  able 
and  sufficient,  but  seems  to  have  lacked  all  the  enthusiasm  we 
might  expect  from  one  who  was  afterward  so  active  a  partisan 
of  the  Chevalier's  cause.  In  short,  striking  as  it  was,  it  can 
not  be  said  to  give  the  duke  any  claim  to  the  title  of  a  great 
orator ;  it  would  rather  prove  that  he  might  have  made  a  first- 
rate  lawyer.  It  shows,  however,  that  had  he  chosen  to  apply 
himself  diligently  to  politics,  he  might  have  turned  out  a  great 
leader  of  the  Opposition. 

Neither  this  speech  nor  the  bishop's  able  defense  saved  him ; 
and  in  the  following  month  he  was  banished  the  kingdom,  and 
passed  the  rest  of  his  days  in  Paris. 

Wharton,  however,  was  not  content  with  the  House  as  an 
arena  of  political  agitation.  He  was  now  old  enough  to  have 
matured  his  principles  thoroughly,  and  he  completely  espoused 
the  cause  of  the  exiled  family.  He  amused  himself  with  agi- 
tating throughout  the  country,  influencing  elections,  and  seek- 
ing popularity  by  becoming  a  member  of  the  Wax-chandlers' 
Company.  It  is  a  proof  of  his  great  abilities,  so  shamefully 
thrown  away,  that  he  now,  during  the  course  of  eight  months, 
issued  a  paper,  called  "  The  True  Briton,"  every  Monday  and 
Friday,  written  by  himself,  and  containing  varied  and  sensible 
arguments  in  support  of  his  opinions,  if  not  displaying  any 
vast  amount  of  original  genius.  This  paper,  on  the  model  of 
"The  Tatler,"  "The  Spectator,"  etc.,  had  a  considerable  sale, 
and  attained  no  little  celebrity,  so  that  the  Duke  of  Wharton 
acquired  the  reputation  of  a  literary  man  as  well  as  of  a  polit- 
ical leader. 

But,  whatever  he  might  have  been  in  either  capacity,  his 
disgraceful  life  soon  destroyed  all  hope  of  success  in  them.  He 
was  now  an  acknowledged  wit  about  town,  and,  what  was  then 


SIR   ROBERT    WALPOLE   DUPED.  155 

almost  a  recognized  concomitant  of  that  character,  an  acknowl- 
edged profligate.  He  scattered  his  large  fortune  in  the  most 
reckless  and  foolish  manner :  though  married,  his  moral  con- 
duct was  as  bad  as  that  of  any  bachelor  of  the  day ;  and  such 
was  his  extravagance  and  open  licentiousness,  that,  having 
wasted  a  princely  revenue,  he  was  soon  caught  in  the  meshes 
of  Chancery,  which  very  sensibly  vested  his  fortune  in  the 
hands  of  trustees,  and  compelled  him  to  be  satisfied  with  an 
income  of  twelve  hundred  pounds  a  year. 

The  young  rascal  now  showed  hypocritical  signs  of  peni- 
tence— he  was  always  an  adept  in  that  line — and  protested  he 
Avould  go  abroad  and  live  quietly,  till  his  losses  should  be  re- 
trieved. There  is  little  doubt  that,  under  this  laudable  design, 
he  conceived  one  of  attaching  himself  closer  to  the  Chevalier 
party,  and  even  espousing  the  faith  of  that  unfortunate  prince, 
or  pretender,  whichever  he  may  have  been.  He  set  off  for 
Vienna,  leaving  his  wife  behind  to  die,  in  April,  1726.  He 
had  long  since  quarreled  with  her,  and  treated  her  with  cruel 
neglect,  and  at  her  death  he  was  not  likely  to  be  much  afflict- 
ed. It  is  said,  that,  after  that  event,  a  ducal  family  offered 
him  a  daughter  and  large  fortune  in  marriage,  and  that  the 
Duke  of  Wharton  declined  the  offer,  because  the  latter  was  to 
be  tied  up,  and  he  could  not  conveniently  tie  up  the  former. 
However  this  may  be,  he  remained  a  widower  for  a  short 
time :  we  may  be  sure,  not  long. 

The  hypocrisy  of  going  abroad  to  retrench  was  not  long  un- 
discovered. The  fascinating  scapegrace  seems  to  have  delight- 
ed in  playing  on  the  credulity  of  others ;  and  Walpole  relates 
that,  on  the  eve  of  the  day  on  which  he  delivered  his  famous 
speech  for  Atterbury,  he  sought  an  interview  with  the  minis- 
ter, Sir  Robert  Walpole,  expressed  great  contrition  at  having 
espoused  the  bishop's  cause  hitherto,  and  a  determination  to 
speak  against  him  the  following  day.  The  minister  was  taken 
in,  and  at  the  duke's  request,  supplied  him  with  all  the  main 
arguments,  pro  and  con.  The  duper,  having  got  these  well 
into  his  brain — one  of  the  most  retentive — repaired  to  his  Lon- 
don haunts,  passed  the  night  in  drinking,  and  the  next  day  pro- 
duced all  the  arguments  he  had  digested,  in  the  bishop's  favor. 

At  Vienna  he  was  well  received,  and  carried  out  his  private 
mission  successfully,  but  was  too  restless  to  stay  in  one  place, 
and  soon  set  off  for  Madrid.  Tired  now  of  politics,  he  took  a 
turn  at  love.  He  was  a  poet  after  a  fashion,  for  the  pieces  he 
has  left  are  not  very  good :  he  was  a  fine  gentleman,  always 
spending  more  money  than  he  had,  and  is  said  to  have  been 
handsome.  His  portraits  do  not  give  us  this  impression :  the 
features  are  not  very  regular ;  and  though  not  coarse  are  cer- 


156  VEBY   TRYING. 

tainly  not  refined.  The  mouth,  somewhat  sensual,  is  still  much 
firmer  than  his  character  would  lead  us  to  expect;  the  nose 
sharp  at  the  point,  but  cogitative  at  the  nostrils ;  the  eyes  long- 
but  not  large;  while  the  raised  brow  has  all  that  openness 
which  he  displayed  in  the  indecency  of  his  vices,  but  not  in 
any  honesty  in  his  political  career.  In  a  word,  the  face  is  not 
attractive.  Yet  he  is  described  as  having  had  a  brilliant  com- 
plexion, a  lively,  varying  expression,  and  a  charm  of  person 
and  manner  that  was  quite  irresistible.  Whether  on  this  ac- 
count, or  for  his  talents  and  wit,  which  were  really  shining, 
his  new  Juliet  fell  as  deeply  in  love  with  him  as  he  with  her. 

She  was  maid  of  honor — and  a  highly  honorable  maid — to 
the  Queen  of  Spain.  The  Irish  regiments  long  employed  in  the 
Spanish  service  had  become  more  or  less  naturalized  in  that 
country,  which  accounts  for  the  great  number  of  thoroughly 
Milesian  names  still  to  be  found  there,  some  of  them,  as  O'Don- 
nell,  owned  by  men  of  high  distinction.  Among  other  officers 
who  had  settled  with  their  families  in  the  Peninsula  was  a  Co- 
lonel O'Byrne,  who,  like  most  of  his  countrymen  there,  died 
penniless,  leaving  his  widow  with  a  pension  and  his  daughter 
without  a  sixpence.  It  can  well  be  imagined  that  an  offer  from 
an  English  duke  was  not  to  be  sneezed  at  by  either  Mrs.  or 
Miss  O'Byrne;  but  there  were  some  grave  obstacles  to  the 
match.  The  duke  was  a  Protestant.  But  what  of  that  ?  he 
had  never  been  encumbered  with  religion,  nor  even  with  a  de- 
cent observance  of  its  institutions,  for  it  is  said  that,  when  in 
England,  at  his  country  seat,  he  had,  to  show  how  little  he 
cared  for  respectability,  made  a  point  of  having  the  hounds 
out  on  a  Sunday  morning.  He  was  not  going  to  lose  a  pretty 
girl  for  the  sake  of  a  faith  with  which  he  had  got  disgusted 
ever  since  his  Huguenot  tutor  tried  to  make  him  a  sober  Chris- 
tian. He  had  turned  coat  in  politics,  and  would  now  try  his 
weathercock  capabilities  at  religion.  Nothing  like  variety,  so 
Romanist  he  became. 

But  this  was  not  all:  his  friends  on  the  one  hand  objected  to 
his  marrying  a  penniless  girl,  and  hers,  on  the  other,  warned 
her  of  his  disreputable  character.  But  when  two  people  have 
made  up  their  minds  to  be  one,  such  trifles  as  these  are  of  no 
consequence.  A  far  more  trying  obstacle  was  the  absolute  re- 
fusal of  her  Most  Catholic  Majesty  to  allow  her  maid  of  honor 
to  marry  the  duke. 

It  is  a  marvel  that  after  the  life  of  dissipation  he  had  led, 
this  man  should  have  retained  the  power  of  loving  at  all.  But 
every  thing  about  him  was  extravagant,  and  now  that  he  en- 
tertained a  virtuous  attachment,  he  was  as  wild  in  it  as  he  had 
been  reckless  in  less  respectable  connections.  He  must  have 


THE    DUKE    OF    WHARTON'S    "  WHENS."  157 

been  sincere  at  the  time,  for  the  queen's  refusal  was  followed 
by  a  fit  of  depression  that  brought  on  a  low  fever.  The  queen 
heard  of  it,  and,  touched  by  the  force  of  his  devotion,  sent  him 
a  cheering  message.  The  moment  was  not  to  be  lost,  and,  in 
spite  of  his  weak  state,  he  hurried  to  court,  threw  himself  at 
her  Majesty's  feet,  and  swore  he  must  have  his  lady-love  or  die. 
Thus  pressed,  the  queen  was  forced  to  consent,  but  warned  him 
that  he  would  repent  of  it.  The  marriage  took  place,  and  the 
couple  set  off  to  Rome. 

Here  the  Chevalier  again  received  him  with  open  arms,  and 
took  the  opportunity  of  displaying  his  imaginary  sovereignty 
by  bestowing  on  him  the  Order  of  the  Garter — a  politeness  the 
duke  returned  by  wearing  while  there  the  no  less  unrecognized 
title  of  Duke  of  Northumberland,  which  "  His  Majesty"  had 
formerly  conferred  on  him.  But  James  III.,  though  no  saint, 
had  more  respect  for  decent  conduct  than  his  father  and  uncle ; 
the  duke  ran  off  into  every  species  of  excess,  got  into  debt  as 
usual — 

"When  Wharton's  just,  and  learns  to  pay  his  debts, 
And  reputation  dwells  at  Mother  Brett's, 
*  *  *  * 

Then,  Celia,  shall  my  constant  passion  cease, 
And  my  poor  suffering  heart  shall  be  at  peace," 

says  a  satirical  poem  of  the  day,  called  "  The  Duke  of  Whar- 
ton's Whens" — was  faithless  to  the  wife  he  had  lately  been 
dying  for ;  and,  in  short,  such  a  thorough  blackguard,  that  not 
even  the  Jacobites  could  tolerate  him,  and  they  turned  him  out 
of  the  Holy  City  till  he  should  learn  not  to  bring  dishonor  on 
the  court  of  their  fictitious  sovereign. 

The  duke  was  not  the  man  to  be  much  ashamed  of  himself, 
though  his  poor  wife  may  now  have  begun  to  think  her  late 
mistress  in  the  right,  and  he  was  probably  glad  of  an  excuse 
for  another  change.  At  this  time,  1727,  the  Spaniards  were 
determined  to  wrest  Gibraltar  from  its  English  defenders,  and 
were  sending  thither  a  powerful  army  under  the  command  of 
Los  Torres.  The  duke  had  tried  many  trades  with  more  or 
less  success,  and  now  thought  that  a  little  military  glory  would 
tack  on  well  to  his  highly  honorable  biography.  At  any  rate 
there  was  novelty  in  the  din  of  war,  and  for  novelty  he  would 
go  any  where.  It  mattered  little  that  he  should  fight  against 
his  own  king  and  own  countrymen:  he  was  not  half  blackguard 
enough  yet,  he  may  have  thought ;  he  had  played  traitor  for 
some  time,  he  would  now  play  rebel  outright — the  game  was 
worth  the  candle. 

So  what  does  my  lord  duke  do  but  write  a  letter  (like  the 
Chinese  behind  their  mud  walls,  he  was  always  bold  enough 


158  MILITARY    GLORY   AT   GIBRALTAR. 

when  well  secured  under  the  protection  of  the  post,  and  was 
more  absurd  in  ink  even  than  in  action)  to  the  King  of  Spain, 
offering  him  his  services  as  a  volunteer  against  "  Gib."  Wheth- 
er his  Most  Catholic  Majesty  thought  him  a  traitor,  a  madman, 
or  a  devoted  partisan  of  his  own,  does  not  appear,  for  without 
waiting  for  an  answer — waiting  was  always  too  dull  work  for 
Wharton — he  and  his  wife  set  off  for  the  camp  before  Gibral- 
tar, introduced  themselves  to  the  Conde  in  command,  were  re- 
ceived with  all  the  honor — let  us  say  honor*- — due  to  a  duke, 
and  established  themselves  comfortably  in  the  ranks  of  the  en- 
emy of  England.  But  all  the  duke's  hopes  of  prowess  were 
blighted.  He  had  good  opportunities.  The  Conde  de  los  Tor- 
res made  him  his  aid -de -camp,  and  sent  him  daily  into  the 
trenches  to  see  how  matters  went  on.  When  a  defense  of  a 
certain  Spanish  out-work  was  resolved  upon,  the  duke,  from  his 
rank,  was  chosen  for  the  command.  Yet  in  the  trenches  he  got 
no  worse  wound  than  a  slight  one  on  the  foot  from  a  splinter  of 
a  shell,  and  this  he  afterward  made  an  excuse  for  not  fighting 
a  duel  with  swords ;  and  as  to  the  out-work,  the  English  aban- 
doned the  attack,  so  that  there  was  no  glory  to  be  found  in  the 
defense.  He  soon  grew  weary  of  such  inglorious  and  rather 
dirty  work  as  visiting  trenches  before  a  stronghold  ;  and  well 
he  might ;  for  if  there  be  one  thing  duller  than  another  and  less 
satisfactory,  it  must  be  digging  a  hole  out  of  which  to  kill  your 
brother  mortals ;  and  thinking  he  should  amuse  himself  better 
at  the  court,  he  set  off  for  Madrid.  Here  the  king,  by  way  of 
reward  for  his  brilliant  services  in  doing  nothing,  made  him 
colonel  aggregate — whatever  that  may  be — of  an  Irish  regi- 
ment ;  a  very  poor  aggregate,  we  should  think.  But  my  lord 
duke  wanted  something  livelier  than  the  command  of  a  lot  of 
Hispaniolized  Milesians ;  and  having  found  the  military  career 
somewhat  uninteresting,  wished  to  return  to  that  of  politics. 
He  remembered  with  gusto  the  frolic  life  of  the  Holy  City,  and 
the  political  excitement  in  the  Chevalier's  court,  and  sent  off  a 
letter  to  "  His  Majesty  James  III.,"  expressing,  like  a  rustica- 
ted Oxonian,  his  penitence  for  having  been  so  naughty  the  last 
time,  and  offering  to  come  and  be  very  good  again.  It  is  to 
the  praise  of  the  Chevalier  de  St.  George  that  he  had  worldly 
wisdom  enough  not  to  trust  the  gay  penitent.  He  was  tired, 
as  every  body  else  was,  of  a  man  who  could  stick  to  nothing, 
and  did  not  seem  to  care  about  seeing  him  again.  According- 
ly he  replied  in  true  kingly  style,  blaming  him  for  having  taken 
up  arms  against  their  common  country,  and  telling  him  in  po- 
lite language — as  a  policeman  does  a  riotous  drunkard — that 
he  had  better  go  home.  The  duke  thought  so  too,  was  not 
at  all  offended  at  the  letter,  and 'set  off,  by  way  of  return- 


"UXCLE    HORACE."  159 

ing  toward  his  Penates,  for  Paris,  where  he  arrived  in  May, 
1728. 

Horace  Walpole — not  the  Horace — but  "Uncle  Horace,"  or 
"  old  Horace,"  as  he  was  called,  was  then  embassador  to  the 
court  of  the  Tuileries.  Mr.  Walpole  was  one  of  the  Houghton 
"lot,"  a  brother  of  the  famous  minister  Sir  Robert,  and 
though  less  celebrated,  almost  as  able  in  his  time.  He  had 
distinguished  himself  in  various  diplomatic  appointments,  in 
Spain,  at  Hanover  and  the  Hague,  and  having  successfully 
tackled  Cardinal  Fleury,  the  successor  of  the  Richelieus  and 
Mazarins  at  Paris,  he  was  now  in  high  favor  at  home.  In 
after  years  he  was  celebrated  for  his  duel  with  Chetwynd, 
who,  when  "  Uncle  Horace"  had  in  the  House  expressed  a 
hope  that  the  question  might  be  carried,  had  exclaimed,  "I 
hope  to  see  you  hanged  first !"  "  You  hope  to  see  me  hang- 
ed first,  do  you  ?"  cried  Horace,  with  all  the  ferocity  of  the 
Walpoles ;  and  thereupon,  seizing  him  by  the  most  prominent 
feature  of  his  face,  shook  him  violently.  This  was  matter 
enough  for  a  brace  of  swords  and  coffee  for  four,  and  Mr. 
Chetwynd  had  to  repent  of  his  remark  after  being  severely 
wounded.  In  those  days  our  honorable  House  of  Commons 
was  as  much  an  arena  of  wild  beasts  as  the  American  Senate 
of  to-day. 

To  this  minister  our  noble  duke  wrote  a  hypocritical  letter, 
which,  as  it  shows  how  the  man  could  write  penitently,  is 
worth  transcribing. 

"Lions,  June  28,  1728. 

"  Sir, — Your  excellency  will  be  surpris'd  to  receive  a  letter 
from  me ;  but  the  clemency  with  which  the  government  of 
England  has  treated  me,  which  is  in  a  great  measure  owing 
to  your  brother's  regard  to  my  father's  memory,  makes  me 
hope  that  you  will  give  me  leave  to  express  my  gratitude 
for  it. 

"  Since  his  present  majesty's  accession  to  the  throne  I  have 
absolutely  refused  to  be  concerned  with  the  Pretender  or  any 
of  his  affairs ;  and  during  my  stay  in  Italy  have  behav'd  my- 
self in  a  manner  that  Dr.  Peters,  Mr.  Godolphin,  and  Mr.  Mills 
can  declare  to  be  consistent  with  my  duty  to  the  present  king. 
I  was  forc'd  to  go  to  Italy  to  get  out  of  Spain,  where,  if  my 
true  design  had  been  known,  I  should  have  been  treated  a  lit- 
tle severely. 

"  I  am  coming  to  Paris  to  put  myself  entirely  under  your 
excellency's  protection  ;  and  hope  that  Sir  Robert  Walpole's 
good-nature  will  prompt  him  to  save  a  family  which  his  gen- 
erosity induced  him  to  spare.  If  your  excellency  would  per- 
mit me  to  wait  upon  you  for  an  hour,  I  am  certain  you  would 


160  THE  DUKE'S  IMPUDENCE. 

be  convinc'd  of  the  sincerity  of  my  repentance  for  my  former 
madness,  would  become  an  advocate  with  his  majesty  to  grant 
me  his  most  gracious  pardon,  which  it  is  my  comfort  I  shall 
never  be  required  to  purchase  by  any  step  unworthy  of  a  man 
of  honor.  I  do  not  intend,  in  case  of  the  king's  allowing  me 
to  pass  the  evening  of  my  days  under  the  shadow  of  his  royal 
protection,  to  see  England  for  some  years,  but  shall  remain  in 
France  or  Germany,  as  my  friends  shall  advise,  and  enjoy 
country  sports  till  all  former  stories  are  buried  in  oblivion.  I 
beg  of  your  excellency  to  let  me  receive  your  orders  at  Paris, 
which  I  will  send  to  your  hostel  to  receive.  The  Dutchess  of 
Wharton,  who  is  with  me,  desires  leave  to  wait  on  Mrs.  Wai- 
pole,  if  you  think  proper.  I  am,  etc." 

After  this,  the  embassador  could  do  no  less  than  receive 
him  ;  but  he  was  somewhat  disgusted  when  on  leaving  him  the 
duke  frankly  told  him — forgetting  all  about  his  penitent  let- 
ter, probably,  or  too  reckless  to  care  for  it — that  he  was  going 
to  dine  with  the  Bishop  of  Rochester — Atterbury  himself  then 
living  in  Paris — whose  society  was  interdicted  to  any  subject 
of  King  George.  The  duke,  with  his  usual  folly,  touched 
on  other  subjects  equally  dangerous,  his  visit  to  Koine,  and 
his  conversion  to  Romanism  ;  and,  in  short,  disgusted  the  cau- 
tious Mr.  Walpole.  There  is  something  delightfully  impudent 
about  all  these  acts  of  Wharton's ;  and  had  he  only  been  a 
clown  at  Drury  Lane  instead  of  an  English  nobleman,  he  must 
have  been  successful.  As  it  is,  when  one  reads  the  petty  ha- 
tred and  humbug  of  those  days,  when  liberty  of  speech  was  as 
unknown  as  any  other  liberty,  one  can  not  but  admire  the  im- 
pudence of  his  Grace  of  Wharton,  and  wish  that  most  dukes, 
without  being  as  profligate,  would  be  as  free-spoken. 

With  six  hundred  pounds  in  his  pocket,  our  young  Lothario 
now  set  up  house  at  Rouen,  with  an  establishment  "  equal," 
say  the  old-school  writers,  "  to  his  position,  but  not  to  his 
means."  In  other  words,  he  undertook  to  live  in  a  style  for 
which  he  could  not  pay.  Twelve  hundred  a  year  may  be 
enough  for  a  duke,  as  for  any  other  man,  but  not  for  one  who 
considers  a  legion  of  servants  a  necessary  appendage  to  his 
position.  My  lord  duke,  who  was  a  good  French  scholar, 
soon  found  an  ample  number  of  friends  and  acquaintances,  and 
not  being  particular  about  either,  managed  to  get  through  his 
half-year's  income  in  a  few  weeks.  Evil  consequence :  he  was 
assailed  by  duns.  French  duns  have  never  read  their  Bible, 
and  know  nothing  about  forgiving  debtors;  "  your  money  first, 
and  then  my  pardon,"  is  their  motto.  My  lord  duke  soon 
found  this  out.  Still  he  had  an  income,  and  could  pay  them 


HIGH   TREASON.  161 

all  off  in  time.  So  he  drank  and  was  merry,  till  one  fine  day 
came  a  disagreeable  piece  of  news,  which  startled  him  con- 
siderably. The  government  at  home  had  heard  of  his  doings, 
and  determined  to  arraign  him  for  high  treason. 

He  could  expect  little  else,  for  had  he  not  actually  taken  up 
arms  against  his  sovereign  ? 

Now  Sir  Robert  Walpole  was,  no  doubt,  a  bear.  He  was 
not  a  man  to  love  or  sympathize  with;  but  he  was  good- 
natured  at  bottom.  Our  "frolic  grace"  had  reason  to  ac- 
knowledge this.  He  could  not  complain  of  harshness  in  any 
measures  taken  against  him,  and  he  had  certainly  no  claim 
to  consideration  from  the  government  he  had  treated  so  ill. 
Yet  Sir  Robert  was  willing  to  give  him  every  chance  ;  and  so 
far  did  he  go,  that  he  sent  over  a  couple  of  friends  to  him  to 
induce  him  only  to  ask  pardon  of  the  king,  with  a  promise 
that  it  would  be  granted.  For  sure  the  Duke  of  Wharton's 
character  was  anomalous.  The  same  man  who  had  more  than 
once  humiliated  himself  when  unasked,  who  had  written  to 
Walpole's  brother  the  letter  we  have  read,  would  not  now, 
when  entreated  to  do  so,  write  a  few  lines  to  that  minister  to 
ask  mercy.  Nay,  when  the  gentlemen  in  question  offered  to 
be  content  even  with  a  letter  from  the  duke's  valet,  he  refused 
to  allow  the  man  to  write.  Some  people  may  admire  what 
they  will  believe  to  be  firmness,  but  when  we  review  the  duke's 
character  and  subsequent  acts,  we  can  not  attribute  this  re- 
fusal to  any  thing  but  obstinate  pride.  'The  consequence  of 
this  folly  was  a  stoppage  of  supplies,  for  as  he  was  accused  of 
high  treason,  his  estate  was  of  course  sequestrated.  He  re- 
venged himself  by  writing  a  paper,  which  was  published  in 
"  Mist's  Journal,"  and  which,  under  the  cover  of  a  Persian 
tale,  contained  a  species  of  libel  on  the  government. 

His  position  was  now  far  from  enviable ;  and,  assailed  by 
duns,  he  had  no  resource  but  to  humble  himself,  not  before 
those  he  had  offended,  but  before  the  Chevalier,  to  whom  he 
wrote  in  his  distress,  and  who  sent  him  £2000,  which  he  soon 
frittered  away  in  follies.  This  gone,  the  duke  begged  and 
borrowed,  for  there  are  some  people  such  fools  that  they  would 
rather  lose  a  thousand  pounds  to  a  peer  than  give  sixpence  to 
a  pauper,  and  many  a  tale  was  told  of  the  artful  manner  in 
which  his  grace  managed  to  cozen  his  friends  out  of  a  louis  or 
two.  His  ready  wit  generally  saved  him. 

Thus  on  one  occasion  an  Irish  toady  invited  him  to  dinner ; 
the  duke  talked  of  his  wardrobe,  then  sadly  defective ;  what 
suit  should  he  wear  ?  The  Hibernian  suggested  black  velvet. 
"  Could  you  recommend  a  tailor  ?"  "  Certainly."  Snip  came, 
an  expensive  suit  was  ordered,  put  on,  and  the  dinner  taken. 


162  LAST   EXTREMITIES. 

In  due  course  the  tailor  called  for  his  money.  The  duke  was 
not  a  bit  at  a  loss,  though  he  had  but  a  few  francs  to  his  name. 
"Honest  man,"  quoth  he,  "you  mistake  the  matter  entirely. 
Carry  the  bill  to  Sir  Peter ;  for  know  that  whenever  I  consent 
to  wear  another  man's  livery,  my  master  pays  for  the  clothes," 
and  inasmuch  as  the  dinner-giver  was  an  Irishman,  he  did  act- 
ually discharge  the  account. 

At  other  times  he  would  give  a  sumptuous  entertainment, 
and  in  one  way  or  another  induce  his  guests  to  pay  for  it.  He 
was  only  less  adroit  in  coining  excuses  than  Theodore  Hook, 
and  had  he  lived  a  century  later,  we  might  have  a  volume  full 
of  anecdotes  to  give  of  his  ways  and  no  means.  Meanwhile 
his  unfortunate  duchess  was  living  on  the  charity  of  friends, 
while  her  lord  and  master,  when  he  could  get  any  one  to  pay 
for  a  band,  was  serenading  young  ladies.  Yet  he  was  jealous 
enough  of  his  wife  at  times,  and  once  sent  a  challenge  to  a 
Scotch  nobleman,  simply  because  some  silly  friend  asked  him 
if  he  had  forbidden  his  wife  to  dance  with  the  lord.  He  went 
all  the  way  to  Flanders  to  meet  his  opponent ;  but,  perhaps 
fortunately  for  the  duke,  Marshal  Berwick  arrested  the  Scotch- 
man, and  the  duel  never  came  off. 

Whether  he  felt  his  end  Approaching,  or  whether  he  was 
sick  of  vile  pleasures  which  he  had  recklessly  pursued  from  the 
age  of  fifteen,  he  now,  though  only  thirty  years  of  age,  retired 
for  a  time  to  a  convent,  and  was  looked  on  as  a  penitent  and 
devotee.  Penury,  doubtless,  cured  him  in  a  measure,  and 
poverty,  the  porter  of  the  gates  of  heaven,  warned  him  to 
look  forward  beyond  a  life  he  had  so  shamefully  misused.  But 
it  was  only  a  temporary  repentance ;  and  when  he  left  the  re- 
ligious house,  he  again  rushed  furiously  into  every  kind  of  dis- 
sipation. 

At  length,  utterly  reduced  to  the  last  extremities,  he  be- 
thought himself  of  "his  colonelcy  in  Spain,  and  determined  to 
set  out  to  join  his  regiment.  The  following  letter  from  a  friend 
who  accompanied  him  will  best  show  what  circumstances  he 
was  in : 

"Paris,  June  1st,  1729. 

"  Dear  Sir, — I  am  just  returned  from  the  Gates  of  Death,  to 
return  you  Thanks  for  your  last  kind  Letter  of  Accusations, 
which  I  am  persuaded  was  intended  as  a  seasonable  Help  to 
my  Recollection,  at  a  Time  that  it  was  necessary  for  me  to 
send  an  Inquisitor  General  into  my  Conscience,  to  examine  and 
settle  all  the  Abuses  that  ever  were  committed  in  that  little 
Court  of  Equity ;  but  I  assure  you,  your  long  Letter  did  not 
lay  so  much  my  Faults  as  my  Misfortunes  before  me,  which 
believe  me,  dear ,  have  fallen  as  heavy  and  as  thick  upon 


SAD    DAYS    IN    PARIS.  163 

ine  as  the  Shower  of  Hail  upon  us  two  in  E Forest,  and 

has  left  me  much  at  a  Loss  which  way  to  turn  myself.  The 
Pilot  of  the  Ship  I  embarked  in,  who  industriously  ran  upon 
every  Rock,  has  at  last  split  the  Vessel,  and  so  much  of  a  sud- 
den, that  the  whole  Crew,  I  mean  his  Domesticks,  are  all  left 
to  swim  for  their  Lives,  without  one  friendly  Plank  to  assist 
them  to  Shore.  In  short,  he  left  me  sick,  in  Debt,  and  with- 
out a  Penny ;  but  as  I  begin  to  recover,  and  have  a  little  Time 
to  think,  I  can't  help  considering  myself,  as  one  whisk'd  up 
behind  a  Witch  upon  a  Broomstick,  and  hurried  over  Mount- 
ains and  Dales  through  confus'd  "Woods  and  thorny  Thickets, 
and  when  the  Charm  is  ended,  and  the  poor  Wretch  dropp'd 
in  a  Desart,  he  can  give  no  other  Account  of  his  enchanted 
Travels,  but  that  he  is  much  fatigued  in  Body  and  Mind,  his 
Cl  oaths  torn,  and  worse  in  all  other  Circumstances,  without 
being  of  the  least  Service  to  himself  or  an.y  body  else.  But  I 
will  follow  your  Advice  with  an  active  Resolution,  to  retrieve 
my  bad  Fortune,  and  almost  a  Year  miserably  misspent. 

"  But  notwithstanding  what  I  have  suffered,  and  what  my 
Brother  Mad-man  has  done  to  undo  himself,  and  every  body 
who  was  so  unlucky  to  have  the  least  Concern  with  him,  I 
could  not  but  be  movingly  touch,' d  at  so  extraordinary  a  Vicis- 
situde of  Fortune,  to  see  a  great  Man  fallen  from  that  shining- 
Light,  in  which  I  beheld  him  in  the  House  of  Lords,  to  such  a 
Degree  of  Obscurity,  that  I  have  observ'd  the  meanest  Com- 
moner here  decline,  and  the  Few  he  would  sometimes  fasten 
on,  to  be  tired  of  his  Company ;  for  you  know  he  is  but  a  bad 
Orator  in  his  Cups,  and  of  late  he  has  been  but  seldom  sober. 

"  A  week  before  he  left  Paris,  he  was  so  reduced,  that  he 
had  not  one  single  Crown  at  Command,  and  was  forc'd  to 
thrust  in  with  any  Acquaintance  for  a  Lodging :  Walsh  and  I 
have  had  him  by  Turns,  all  to  avoid  a  Crowd  of  Duns,  which 
he  had  of  all  Sizes,  from  Fourteen  hundred  Livres  to  Four, 
who  hunted  him  so  close,  that  he  was  forced  to  retire  to  some 
of  the  neighboring  Villages  for  Safety.  I,  sick  as  I  was,  hur- 
ried about  Paris  to  raise  Money,  and  to  St.  Germain's  to  get 
him  Linen ;  I  bought  him  one  Shirt  and  a  Cravat,  which  with 
500  Livres,  his  whole  Stock,  he  and  his  Duchess,  attended  by 
one  Servant,  set  out  for  Spain.  All  the  News  I  have  heard  of 
them  since  is  that  a  Day  or  two  after,  he  sent  for  Captain 
Brierly,  and  two  or  three  of  his  Domesticks,  to  follow  him ; 
but  none  but  the  Captain  obey'd  the  Summons.  Where  they 
are  now,  I  can't  tell ;  but  fear  they  must  be  in  great  Distress 
by  this  time,  if  he  has  no  other  Supplies ;  and  so  ends  my  Mel- 
ancholy Story.  I  am,  etc." 


164      WHARTON'S  DEATH  IN  A  BERNARDINE  CONVENT. 

Still  his  good-humor  did  not  desert  him;  he  joked  about 
their  poverty  on  the  road,  and  wrote  an  amusing  account  of 
their  journey  to  a  friend,  winding  up  with  the  well-known 
lines : 

"Be  kind  to  my  remains,  and  oh !  defend, 
Against  your  judgment,  your  departed  friend. " 

His  mind  was  as  vigorous  as  ever,  in  spite  of  the  waste 
of  many  debauches ;  and  when  recommended  to  make  a  new 
translation  of  "  Telemachus,"  he  actually  devoted  one  whole 
day  to  the  work ;  the  next  he  forgot  all  about  it.  In  the  same 
manner  he  began  a  play  on  the  story  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots, 
and  Lady  M.  W.  Montagu  wrote  an  epilogue  for  it,  but  the 
piece  never  got  beyond  a  few  scenes.  His  genius,  perhaps, 
was  not  for  either  poetry  or  the  drama.  His  mind  was  a  keen, 
clear  one,  better  suited  to  argument  and  to  grapple  tough  po- 
lemic subjects.  Had  he  but  been  a  sober  man,  he  might  have 
been  a  fair,  if  not  a  great  writer.  The  "  True  Briton,"  with 
many  faults  of  license,  shows  what  his  capabilities  were.  His 
absence  of  moral  sense  may  be  guessed  from  the  fact  that  in  a 
poem  on  the  preaching  of  Atterbury,  he  actually  compares  the 
bishop  to  our  Savior  himself! 

At  length  he  reached  Bilboa  and  his  regiment,  and  had  to 
live  on  the  meagre  pay  of  eighteen  pistoles  a  month.  The 
Duke  of  Ormond,  then  an  exile,  took  pity  on  his  wife,  and  sup- 
ported her  for  a  time :  she  afterward  rejoined  her  mother  at 
Madrid. 

Meanwhile,  the  year  1730  brought  about  a  salutary  change 
in  the  duke's  morals.  His  health  was  fast  giving  way  from 
the  effects  of  divers  excesses ;  and  there  is  nothing  like  bad 
health  for  purging  a  bad  soul.  The  end  of  a  misspent  life  was 
fast  drawing  near,  and  he  could  only  keep  it  up  by  broth  with 
eggs  beaten  up  in  it.  He  lost  the  use  of  his  limbs,  but  not  of 
his  gayety.  In  the  mountains  of  Catalonia  he  met  with  a  min- 
eral spring  which  did  him  some  good ;  so  much,  in  fact,  that 
he  was  able  to  rejoin  his  regiment  for  a  time.  A  fresh  attack 
sent  him  back  to  the  waters ;  but  on  his  way  he  was  so  vio- 
lently attacked  that  he  was  forced  to  stop  at  a  little  village. 
Here  he  found  himself  without  the  means  of  going  farther,  and 
in  the  worst  state  of  health.  The  monks  of  a  Bernardine  con- 
vent took  pity  on  him  and  received  him  into  their  house.  He 
grew  worse  and  worse ;  and  in  a  week  died  on  the  31st  of 
May,  without  a  friend  to  pity  or  attend  him,  among  strangers, 
and  at  the  early  age  of  thirty-two. 

Thus  ended  the  life  of  one  of  the  cleverest  fools  that  have 
ever  disgraced  our  peerage. 


LORD   HERVEY. 

THE  village  of  Kensington  was  disturbed  in  its  sweet  repose 
one  day,  more  than  a  century  ago,  by  the  rumbling  of  a  pon- 
derous coach  and  six,  with  four  outriders  and  two  equerries 
kicking  up  the  dust ;  while  a  small  body  of  heavy  dragoons 
rode  solemnly  after  the  huge  vehicle.  It  waded,  with  in- 
glorious struggles,  through  a  deep  mire  of  mud,  between  the 
Palace  and  Hyde  Park,  until  the  cortege  entered  Kensington 
Park,  as  the  gardens  were  then  called,  and  began  to  track  the 
old  road  that  led  to  the  red-brick  structure  to  which  William 
III.  had  added  a  higher  story,  built  by  Wren.  There  are  two 
roads  by  which  coaches  could  approach  the  house :  "  one,"  as  the 
famous  John,  Lord  Hervey,  wrote  to  his  mother,  "so  convex, 
the  other  so  concave,  that,  by  this  extreme  of  faults,  they  agree 
in  the  common  one  of  being,  like  the  high-road,  impassable." 
The  rumbling  coach,  with  its  plethoric  steeds,  toils  slowly  on, 
and  reaches  the  dismal  pile,  of  which  no  association  is  so  pre- 
cious as  that  of  its  having  been  the  birth-place  of  our  loved  Vic- 
toria Regina.  All  around,  as  the  emblazoned  carriage  impress- 
ively veers  round  into  the  grand  entrance,  savors  of  William 
and  Mary,  of  Anne,  of  Bishop  Burnet  and  Harley,  Atterbury 
and  Bolingbroke.  But  those  were  pleasant  days  compared  to 
those  of  the  second  George,  whose  return  from  Hanover  in  this 
mountain  of  a  coach  is  now  described. 

The  panting  steeds  are  gracefully  curbed  by  the  state  coach- 
man in  his  scarlet  livery,  with  his  cocked  hat  and  gray  wig  un- 
derneath it :  now  the  horses  are  foaming  and  reeking  as  if 
they  had  come  from  the  world's  end  to  Kensington,  and  yet 
they  have  only  been  to  meet  King  George  on  his  entrance  into 
London,  which  he  has  reached  from  Helvoetsluys,  on  his  way 
from  Hanover,  in  time,  as  he  expects,  to  spend  his  birthday 
among  his  English  subjects. 

It  is  Sunday,  and  repose  renders  the  retirement  of  Kensing- 
ton and  its  avenues  and  shades  more  sombre  than  ever.  Sub- 
urban retirement  is  usually  so.  It  is  noon ;  and  the  inmates 
of  Kensington  Palace  are  just  coming  forth  from  the  chapel  in 
the  palace.  The  coach  is  now  stopping,  and  the  equerries  are 
at  hand  to  oifer  their  respectful  assistance  to  the  diminutive 
figure  that,  in  full  Field-marshal  regimentals,  a  cocked  hat  stuck 
crosswise  on  his  head,  a  sword  dangling  even  down  to  his 


166  GEORGE   II.  ARRIVING   FROM   HANOVER. 

heels,  ungraciously  heeds  them  not,  but  stepping  down,  as  the 
great  iron  gates  are  thrown  open  to  receive  him,  looks  neither 
like  a  king  nor  a  gentleman.  A  thin,  worn  face,  in  which 
weakness  and  passion  are  at  once  pictured ;  a  form  buttoned 
and  padded  up  to  the  chin;  high  Hessian  boots  without  a 
wrinkle ;  a  sword  and  a  swagger,  no  more  constituting  him  the 
military  character  than  the  "  your  majesty"  from  every  lip  can 
make  a  poor  thing  of  clay  a  king.  Such  was  George  II. :  brutal 
even  to  his  submissive  wife.  Stunted  by  nature,  he  was  insig- 
nificant in  form,  as  he  was  petty  in  character ;  not  a  trace  of 
royalty  could  be  found  in  that  silly,  tempestuous  physiognomy, 
with  its  hereditary  small  head :  not  an  atom  of  it  in  his  made- 
up,  paltry  little  presence ;  still  less  in  his  bearing,  language,  or 
qualities. 

The  queen  and  her  court  have  come  from  chapel,  to  meet 
the  royal  absentee  at  the  great  gate :  the  consort,  who  was  to 
his  gracious  majesty  like  an  elder  sister  rather  than  a  wife, 
bends  down,  not  to  his  knees,  but  yet  she  bends,  to  kiss  the 
hand  of  her  royal  husband.  She  is  a  fair,  fat  woman,  no  lon- 
ger young,  scarcely  comely ;  but  with  a  charm  of  manners,  a 
composure,  and  a  savoir  faire  that  causes  one  to  regard  her 
as  mated,  not  matched  to  the  little  creature  in  that  cocked 
hat,  which  he  does  not  take  off  even  when  she  stands  before 
him.  The  pair,  nevertheless,  embrace ;  it  is  a  triennial  cere- 
mony performed  when  the  king  goes  or  returns  from  Hanover, 
but  suffered  to  lapse  at  other  times  ;  but  the  condescension  is 
too  great ;  and  Caroline  ends,  where  she  began,  "  gluing  her 
lips"  to  the  ungracious  hand  held  out  to  her  in  evident  ill- 
humor. 

They  turn,  and  walk  through  the  court,  then  up  the  grand 
staircase,  into  the  queen's  apartment.  The  king  has  been 
swearing  all  the  way  at  England  and  the  English,  because  he 
has  been  obliged  to  return  from  Hanover,  where  the  German 
mode  of  life  and  new  mistresses  were  more  agreeable  to  him 
than  the  English  customs  and  an  old  wife.  He  displays,  there- 
fore, even  on  this  supposed  happy  occasion,  one  of  the  worst 
outbreaks  of  his  insufferable  temper,  of  which  the  queen  is  the 
first  victim.  All  the  company  in  the  palace,  both  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  are  ordered  to  enter :  he  talks  to  them  all,  but  to 
the  queen  he  says  not  a  word. 

She  is  attended  by  Mrs.  Clayton,  afterward  Lady  Sundon, 
whose  lively  manners  and  great  good-temper  and  good- will — 
lent  out  like  leasehold  to  all,  till  she  saw  what  their  friendship 
might  bring — are  always  useful  at  these  tristes  rencontres. 
Mrs.  Clayton  is  the  amalgamating  substance  between  chemical 
agents  which  have,  of  themselves,  no  cohesion ;  she  covers 


A    SCENE   I5EFORE   KENSINGTON   PALACE — GEOEGE  II.   AND   QUEEN  CAROLINE. 


LADY   SUFFOLK.  169 

with  address  what  is  awkward;  she  smooths  down  with 
something  pleasant  what  is  rude ;  she  turns  off—  and  her  office 
in  that  respect  is  no  sinecure  at  that  court — what  is  indecent, 
so  as  to  keep  the  small  majority  of  the  company  who  have  re- 
spectable notions  in  good  humor.  To  the  right  of  Queen 
Caroline  stands  another  of  her  majesty's  household,  to  whom 
the  most  deferential  attention  is  paid  by  all  present :  neverthe- 
less, she  is  the  queen  of  the  court,  but  not  the  queen  of  the  royal 
master  of  that  court.  It  is  Lady  Suffolk,  the  mistress  of  King 
George  II.,  and  long  mistress  of  the  robes  to  Queen  Caroline. 
She  is  now  past  the  bloom  of  youth,  but  her  attractions  are 
not  in  their  wane ;  but  endured  until  she  had  attained  her 
seventy-ninth  year.  Of  a  middle  height,  well  made,  extreme- 
ly fair,  with  very  fine  light  hair,  she  attracts  regard  from  her 
sweet  fresh  face,  which  had  in  it  a  comeliness  independent  of 
regularity  of  feature.  According  to  her  invariable  custom, 
she  is  dressed  with  simplicity ;  her  silky  tresses  are  drawn 
somewhat  back  from  her  snowy  forehead,  and  fall  in  long 
tresses  on  her  shoulders,  not  less  transparently  white.  She 
wears  a  gown  of  rich  silk,  opening  in  front  to  display  a  chem- 
isette of  the  most  delicate  cambric,  which  is  scarcely  less  deli- 
cate than  her  skin.  Her  slender  arms  are  without  bracelets, 
and  her  taper  fingers  without  rings.  As  she  stands  behind  the 
queen,  holding  her  majesty's  fan  and  gloves,  she  is  obliged, 
from  her  deafness,  to  lean  her  fair  face  with  its  sunny  hair  first 
to  the  right  side,  then  to  the  left,  with  the  helpless  air  of  one 
exceedingly  deaf — for  she  had  been  afflicted  with  that  infirm- 
ity for  some  years ;  yet  one  can  not  say  whether  her  appeal- 
ing looks,  w*hich  seem  to  say,  "  Enlighten  me,  if  you  please" — 
and  the  sort  of  softened  manner  in  which  she  accepts  civilities 
which  she  scarcely  comprehends,  do  not  enhance  the  wonder- 
ful charm  which  drew  every  one  who  knew  her  toward  this 
frail,  but  passionless  woman. 

The  queen  forms  the  centre  of  the  group.  Caroline,  daugh- 
ter of  the  Marquis  of  Brandenburgh-Anspach,  notwithstanding 
her  residence  in  England  of  many  years,  notwithstanding  her 
having  been,  at  the  era  at  which  this  biography  begins,  ten 
years  its  queen — is  still  German  in  every  attribute.  She  re- 
tains, in  her  fair  and  comely  face,  traces  of  having  been  hand- 
some ;  but  her  skin  is  deeply  scarred  by  the  cruel  small-pox. 
She  is  now  at  that  time  of  life  when  Sir  Robert  Walpole  even 
thought  it  expedient  to  reconcile  her  to  no  longer  being  an 
object  of  attraction  to  her  royal  consort.  As  a  woman,  she 
has  ceased  to  be  attractive  to  a  man  of  the  character  of  George 
II. ;  but,  as  a  queen,  she  is  still,  as  far  as  manners  are  concern- 
ed, incomparable.  As  she  turns  to  address  various  members 

H 


170  SIR   ROBERT   WALPOLE. 

of  the  assembly,  her  style  is  full  of  sweetness  as  well  as  of 
courtesy;  yet  on  other  occasions  she  is  majesty  itself.  The 
tones  of  her  voice,  with  its  still  foreign  accent,  are  most  capti- 
vating; her  eyes  penetrate  into  every  countenance  on  which 
they  rest.  Her  figure,  plump  and  matronly,  has  lost  much  of 
its  contour  ;  but  is  well  suited  for  her  part.  Majesty  in  wom- 
an should  be  embonpoint.  Her  hands  are  beautifully  white, 
and  faultless  in  shape.  The  king  always  admired  her  bust ; 
and  it  is,  therefore,  by  royal  command,  tolerably  exposed.  Her 
fair  hair  is  upraised  in  full  short  curls  over  her  brow ;  her 
dress  is  rich,  and  distinguished  in  that  respect  from  that  of  the 
Countess  of  Suffolk.  "  Her  good  Howard" — as  she  was  wont 
to  call  her  when,  before  her  elevation  to  the  peerage,  she  was 
lady  of  the  bedchamber  to  Caroline,  had,  when  in  that  capacity, 
been  often  subjected  to  servile  offices,  which  the  queen,  though 
apologizing  in  the  sweetest  manner,  delighted  to  make  her 
perform.  "  My  good  Howard"  having  one  day  placed  a  hand- 
kerchief on  the  back  of  her  royal  mistress,  the  king,  who  half 
worshiped  his  intellectual  wife,  pulled  it  off  in  a  passion,  say- 
ing, "  Because  you  have  an  ugly  neck  yourself,  you  hide  the 
queen's !"  All,  however,  that  evening  was  smooth  as  ice,  and 
perhaps  as  cold  also.  The  company  are  quickly  dismissed, 
and  the  king,  who  has  scarcely  spoken  to  the  queen,  retires  to 
his  closet,  where  he  is  attended  by  the  subservient  Caroline, 
and  by  two  other  persons. 

Sir  Robert  Walpole,  prime  minister,  has  accompanied  the 
king,  in  his  carriage,  from  the  very  entrance  of  London,  where 
the  famous  statesman  met  him.  He  is  now  the  privileged 
companion  of  their  majesties,  in  their  seclusion  for  the  rest  of 
the  evening.  His  cheerful  face,  in  its  full  evening  disguise  of 
wig  and  tie,  his  invariable  good-humor,  his  frank  manners,  his 
wonderful  sense,  his  views,  more  practical  than  elevated,  suffi- 
ciently account  for  the  influence  which  this  celebrated  minister 
obtained  over  Queen  Caroline,  and  the  readiness  of  King 
George  to  submit  to  the  tie.  But  Sir  Robert's  great  source 
of  ascendency  was  his  temper.  Never  was  there  in  the  annals 
of  our  country  a  minister  so  free  of  access :  so  obliging  in  giv- 
ing, so  unoffending  when  he  refused ;  so  indulgent  and  kind  to 
those  dependent  on  him ;  so  generous,  so  faithful  to  his  friends, 
so  forgiving  to  his  foes.  This  was  his  character  under  one 
phase :  even  his  adherents  sometimes  blamed  his  easiness  of 
temper ;  the  impossibility  in  his  nature  to  cherish  the  remem- 
brance of  a  wrong,  or  even  to  be  roused  by  an  insult.  But, 
while  such  were  the  amiable  traits  of  his  character,  history  has 
its  lists  of  accusations  against  him  for  corruption  of  the  most 
shameless  description.  The  end  of  this  veteran  statesman's 


LORD   HERVEY.  171 

career  is  well  known.  The  fraudulent  contracts  which  he 
gave,  the  peculation  and  profusion  of  the  secret  service  money, 
his  undue  influence  at  elections,  brought  around  his  later  life 
a  storm,  from  which  he  retreated  into  the  Upper  House,  when 
created  Earl  of  Orford.  It  was  before  this  timely  retirement 
from  office  that  he  burst  forth  in  these  words:  "I  oppose 
nothing ;  give  in  to  every  thing ;  am  said  to  do  every  thing, 
and  to  answer  for  every  thing ;  and  yet,  God  knows,  I  dare 
not  do  what  I  think  is  right." 

With  his  public  capacity,  however,  we  have  not  here  to  do : 
it  is  in  his  character  of  a  courtier  that  we  view  him  following 
the  queen  and  king.  His  round,  complacent  face,  with  his 
small  glistening  eyes,  arched  eyebrows,  and  with  a  mouth 
ready  to  break  out  aloud  into  a  laugh,  are  all  subdued  into  a 
respectful  gravity  as  he  listens  to  King  George  grumbling  at 
the  necessity  for  his  return  home.  No  "English  cook  could 
dress  a  dinner ;  no  English  cook  could  select  a  dessert ;  no  En- 
glish coachman  could  drive,  nor  English  jockey  ride ;  no  En- 
glishman— such  were  his  habitual  taunts — knew  how  to  come 
into  a  room ;  no  Englishwoman  understood  how  to  dress  her- 
self. The  men,  he  said,  talked  of  nothing  but  their  dull  poli- 
tics, and  the  women  of  nothing  but  their  ugly  clothes.  Where- 
as, in  Hanover,  all  these  things  were  at  perfection :  men  were 
patterns  of  politeness  and  gallantry ;  women,  of  beauty,  wit, 
and  entertainment.  His  troops  there  were  the  bravest  in  the 
world ;  his  manufacturers  the  most  ingenious ;  his  people,  the 
happiest :  in  Hanover,  in  short,  plenty  reigned,  riches  flowed, 
arts  flourished,  magnificence  abounded,  every  thing  was  in 
abundance  that  could  make  a  prince  great,  or  a  people  blessed. 

There  was  one  standing  behind  the  queen  who  listened  to 
these  outbreaks  of  the  king's  bilious  temper,  as  he  called  it, 
with  an  apparently  respectful  solicitude,  but  with  the  deepest 
disgust  in  his  heart.  A  slender,  elegant  figure,  in  a  court  suit, 
faultlessly  and  carefully  perfect  in  that  costume,  stands  behind 
the  queen's  chair.  It  is  Lord  Hervey.  His  lofty  forehead,  his 
features,  which  have  a  refinement  of  character,  his  well-turned 
mouth,  and  full  and  dimpled  chin,  form  his  claims  to  that 
beauty  which  won  the  heart  of  the  lovely  Mary  Lepel ;  while 
the  somewhat  thoughtful  and  pensive  expression  of  his  physi- 
ognomy, when  in  repose,  indicated  the  sympathizing,  yet,  at 
the  same  time,  satirical  character  of  one  who  won  the  affec- 
tions, perhaps  unconsciously,  of  the  amiable  Princess  Caroline, 
the  favorite  daughter  of  George  II. 

A  general  air  of  languor,  ill  concealed  by  the  most  studied 
artifice  of  countenance,  and  even  of  posture,  characterizes  Lord 
Hervey.  He  would  have  abhorred  robustness ;  for  he  belong- 


172  A    SET   OF   FINE   GENTLEMEN. 

ed  to  the  clique  then  called  Maccaronis ;  a  set  of  fine  gentle- 
men, of  whom  the  present  world  would  not  be  worthy,  tricked 
out  for  show,  fitted  only  to  drive  out  fading  majesty  in  a  state 
coach ;  exquisite  in  every  personal  appendage,  too  fine  for  the 
common  usages  of  society ;  point-device.)  not  only  in  every  curl 
and  ruffle,  but  in  every  attitude  and  step  ;  men  with  full  satin 
roses  on  their  shining  shoes;  diamond  tablet  rings  on  their 
forefingers ;  with  snuff-boxes,  the  worth  of  which  might  al- 
most purchase  a  farm ;  lace  worked  by  the  delicate  fingers 
of  some  religious  recluse  of  an  ancestress,  and  taken  from  an 
altar-cloth ;  old  point-lace,  dark  as  coffee- water  could  make  it ; 
with  embroidered  waistcoats,  wreathed  in  exquisite  tambour- 
work  round  each  capacious  lappet  and  pocket ;  with  cut  steel 
buttons  that  glistened  beneath  the  courtly  wax-lights:  with 
these  and  fifty  other  small  but  costly  characteristics  that  estab- 
lished the  reputation  of  an  aspirant  Maccaroni.  Lord  Hervey 
was,  in  truth,  an  effeminate  creature :  too  dainty  to  walk ;  too 
precious  to  commit  his  frame  to  horseback ;  and  prone  to  imi- 
tate the  somewhat  recluse  habits  which  German  rulers  intro- 
duced within  the  court :  he  was  disposed  to  candle-light  pleas- 
ures and  cockney  diversions ;  to  Marybone  and  the  Mall,  and 
shrinking  from  the  athletic  and  social  recreations  which,  like 
so  much  that  was  manly  and  English,  were  confined  almost  to 
the  English  squire  pur  el  simple  after  the  Hanoverian  acces- 
sion ;  when  so  much  degeneracy  for  a  while  obscured  the  En- 
glish character,  debased  its  tone,  enervated  its  best  races,  vili- 
fied its  literature,  corrupted  its  morals,  changed  its  costume, 
and  degraded  its  architecture. 

Beneath  the  effeminacy  of  the  Maccaroni,  Lord  Hervey  was 
one  of  the  few  who  united  to  intense  finery  in  every  minute 
detail,  an  acute  and  cultivated  intellect.  To  perfect  a  Macca- 
roni it  was  in  truth  advisable,  if  not  essential,  to  unite  some 
smattering  of  learning,  a  pretension  to  wit,  to  his  super-dan- 
dyism ;  to  be  the  author  of  some  personal  squib,  or  the  trans- 
lator of  some  classic.  Queen  Caroline  was  too  cultivated  her- 
self to  suffer  fools  about  her,  and  Lord  Hervey  was  a  man  after 
her  own  taste :  as  a  courtier  he  was  essentially  a  fine  gentle- 
man ;  and,  more  than  that,  he  could  be  the  most  delightful 
companion,  the  most  sensible  adviser,  and  the  most  winning 
friend  in  the  court.  His  ill  health,  which  he  carefully  conceal- 
ed, his  fastidiousness,  his  ultra  delicacy  of  habits,  formed  an 
agreeable  contrast  to  the  coarse  robustness  of  "  Sir  Robert," 
and  constituted  a  relief  after  the  society  of  the  vulgar,  strong- 
minded  minister,  who  was  born  for  the  hustings  and  the  House 
of  Commons  rather  than  for  the  courtly  drawing-room. 

John  Lord  Hervey,  long  vice-chamberlain  to  Queen  Caro- 


AN   ECCENTRIC   KACE,  173 

line,  was,  like  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  descended  from  a  common- 
er's family,  one  of  those  good  old  squires  who  lived,  as  Sir 
Henry  Wotton  says,  "  without  lustre  and  without  obscurity." 
The  Duchess  .of  Marlborough  had  procured  the  elevation  of 
the  Herveys  of  Ickworth  to  the  peerage.  She  happened  to  be 
intimate  with  Sir  Thomas  Felton,  the  father  of  Mrs.  Hervey, 
afterward  Lady  Bristol,  whose  husband,  at  first  created  Lord 
Hervey,  and  afterward  Earl  of  Bristol,  expressed  his  obliga- 
tions by  retaining  as  his  motto,  when  raised  to  the  peerage, 
the  words  "  Je  n'oublieray  jamais,"  in  allusion  to  the  service 
done  him  by  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Marlborough. 

The  Herveys  had  always  been  an  eccentric  race ;  and  the 
classification  of  "  men,  women,  and  Herveys,"  by  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montagu,  was  not  more  witty  than  true.  There  was 
in  the  whole  race  an  eccentricity  which  bordered  on  the  ridic- 
ulous, but  did  not  imply  want  of  sense  or  of  talent.  Indeed 
this  third  species,  "  the  Herveys,"  were  more  gifted  than  the 
generality  of  "  men  and  women."  The  father  of  Lord  Hervey 
had  been  a  country  gentleman  of  good  fortune,  living  at  Ick- 
worth, near  Bury  in  Suffolk,  and  representing  the  town  in  Par- 
liament, as  his  father  had  before  him,  until  raised  to  the  peer- 
age. Before  that  elevation  he  had  lived  on  in  his  own  county, 
uniting  the  character  of  the  English  squire,  in  that  fox-hunting 
county,  with  that  of  a  perfect  gentleman,  a  scholar,  and  a  most 
admirable  member  of  society.  He  was  a  poet  also,  affecting 
the  style  of  Cowley,  who  wrote  an  elegy  upon  his  uncle,  Wil- 
liam Hervey,  an  elegy  compared  to  Milton's  "  Lycidas"  in  im- 
agery, music,  and  tenderness  of  thought.  The  shade  of  Cow- 
ley,  whom  Charles  II.  pronounced,  at  his  death,  to  be  "  the 
best  man  in  England,"  haunted  this  peer,  the  first  Earl  of  Bris- 
tol. He  aspired  especially  to  the  poet's  wit;  and  the  ambition 
to  be  a  wit  flew  like  wildfire  among  his  family,  especially  in- 
fecting his  two  sons,  Carr,  the  elder  brother  of  the  subject  of 
this  memoir,  and  Lord  Hervey. 

It  would  have  been  well  could  the  Earl  of  Bristol  have  trans- 
mitted to  his  sons  his  other  qualities.  He  was  pious,  moral, 
affectionate,  sincere ;  a  consistent  Whig  of  the  old  school,  and, 
as  such,  disapproving  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  of  the  standing 
army,  the  corruptions,  and  that  doctrine  of  expediency  so  un- 
blushingly  avowed  by  the  ministers. 

Created  Earl  of  Bristol  in  1714,  the  heir-apparent  to  his  ti- 
tles and  estates  was  the  elder  brother,  by  a  former  marriage, 
of  John,  Lord  Hervey ;  the  dissolute,  clever,  whimsical  Carr, 
Lord  Hervey.  Pope,  in  one  of  his  satirical  appeals  to  the  sec- 
ond Lord  Hervey,  speaks  of  his  friendship  with  Carr,  "  whose 
early  death  deprived  the  family"  (of  Hervey)  "of  as  much  wit 


174  A  FRAGILE  BOY. 

and  honor  as  he  left  behind  him  in  any  part  of  it."  The  wit 
was  a  family  attribute,  but  the  honor  was  dubious :  Carr  was 
as  deistical  as  any  Maccaroni  of  the  day,  and,  perhaps,  more 
dissolute  than  most :  in  one  respect  he  has  left  behind  him  a 
celebrity  which  may  be  as  questionable  as  his  wit,  or  his  hon- 
or ;  he  is  reputed  to  be  the  father  of  Horace  Walpole,  and  if 
we  accept  presumptive  evidence  of  the  fact,  the  statement  is 
clearly  borne  out,  for  in  his  wit,  his  indifference  to  religion,  to 
say  the  least,  his  satirical  turn,  his  love  of  the  world,  "and  his 
contempt  of  all  that  was  great  and  good,  he  strongly  resem- 
bles his  reputed  son ;  while  the  levity  of  Lady  Walpole's  char- 
acter, and  Sir  Robert's  laxity  and  dissoluteness,  do  not  furnish 
any  reasonable  doubt  to  the  statement  made  by  Lady  Louisa 
Stuart,  in  the  introduction  to  Lord  Wharncliffe's  "Life  of  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu."  Carr,  Lord  Hervey,  died  early,  and 
his  half-brother  succeeded  him  in  his  title  and  expectations. 

John,  Lord  Hervey,  was  educated  first  at  Westminster 
School,  under  Dr.  Freind,  the  friend  of  Mrs.  Montagu ;  thence 
he  was  removed  to  Clare  Hall,  Cambridge :  he  graduated  as  a 
nobleman,  and  became  M.  A.  in  1715. 

At  Cambridge  Lord  Hervey  might  have  acquired  some 
manly  prowess ;  but  he  had  a  mother  who  was  as  strange  as 
the  family  into  which  she  had  married,  and  who  was  passion- 
ately devoted  to  her  son :  she  evinced  her  affection  by  never 
letting  him  have  a  chance  of  being  like  other  English  boys. 
When  his  father  was  at  Newmarket,  Jack  Hervey,  as  he  was 
called,  was  to  ride  a  race,  to  please  his  father ;  but  his  mother 
could  not  risk  her  dear  boy's  safety,  and  the  race  was  won  by 
a  jockey.  He  was  as  precious  and  as  fragile  as  porcelain :  the 
elder  brother's  death  made  the  heir  of  the  Herveys  more  val- 
uable, more  effeminate,  and  more  controlled  than  ever  by  his 
eccentric  mother.  A  court  was  to  be  his  hemisphere,  and  to 
that  all  his  views,  early  in  life,  tended.  He  went  to  Hanover 
to  pay  his  court  to  George  I. :  Carr  had  done  the  same,  and 
had  come  back  enchanted  with  George,  the  heir-presumptive, 
who  made  him  one  of  the  lords  of  the  bedchamber.  Jack  Her- 
vey also  returned  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
afterward  George  II.,  and  the  princess ;  and  that  visit  influ- 
enced his  destiny. 

He  now  proposed  making  the  grand  tour,  which  comprised 
Paris,  Germany,  and  Italy.  But  his  mother  again  interfered : 
she  wept,  she  exhorted,  she  prevailed.  Means  were  refused, 
and  the  stripling  was  recalled  to  hang  about  the  court,  or  to 
loiter  at  Ickworth,  scribbling  verses,  and  causing  his  father 
uneasiness  lest  he  should  be  too  much  of  a  poet,  and  too  little 
of  a  public  man. 


175 

Such  was  his  youth :  disappointed  by  not  obtaining  a  com- 
mission in  the  Guards,  he  led  a  desultory,  butterfly-tike  life ; 
one  day  at  Richmond  with  Queen  Caroline,  then  Princess  of 
Wales ;  another,  at  Pope's  villa,  at  Twickenham ;  sometimes 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  in  which  he  succeeded  his  elder 
brother  as  member  for  Bury ;  and,  at  the  period  when  he  has 
been  described  as  forming  one  of  the  quartette  in  Queen  Caro- 
line's closet  at  St.  James's,  as  vice-chamberlain  to  his  partial 
and  royal  patroness. 

His  early  marriage  with  Mary  Lepel,  the  beautiful  maid  of 
honor  to  Queen  Caroline,  insured  his  felicity,  though  it  did  not 
curb  his  predilections  for  other  ladies. 

Henceforth  Lord  Hervey  lived  all  the  year  round  in  what 
were  then  called  lodgings,  that  is,  apartments  appropriated  to 
the  royal  household,  or  even  to  others,  in  St.  James's,  or  at 
Richmond,  or  at  Windsor.  In  order  fully  to  comprehend  all 
the  intimate  relations  which  he  had  with  the  court,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  present  the  reader  with  some  account  of  the  family  of 
George  II.  Five  daughters  had  been  the  female  issue  of  his 
majesty's  marriage  with  Queen  Caroline.  Three  of  these  prin- 
cesses, the  three  elder  ones,  had  lived,  during  the  life  of  George 
L,  at  St.  James's  with  their  grandfather ;  who,  irritated  by  the 
differences  between  him  and  his  son,  then  Prince  of  Wales, 
adopted  that  measure  rather  as  showing  his  authority  than 
from  any  affection  to  the  young  princesses.  It  was,  in  truth, 
difficult  to  say  which  of  these  royal  ladies  was  the  most  unfor- 
tunate. 

Anne,  the  eldest,  had  shown  her  spirit  early  in  life  while  re- 
siding with  George  I. ;  she  had  a  proud,  imperious  nature,  and 
her  temper  was,  it  must  be  owned,  put  to  a  severe  test.  The 
only  time  that  George  I.  did  the  English  the  honor  of  choosing 
one  of  the  beauties  of  the  nation  for  his  mistress,  was  during 
the  last  year  of  his  reign.  The  object  of  his  choice  was  Anne 
Brett,  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  infamous  Countess  of  Mac- 
clesfield  by  her  second  husband.  The  neglect  of  Savage,  the 
poet,  her  son,  was  merely  one  passage  in  the  iniquitous  life  of 
Lady  Macclesfield.  Endowed  with  singular  taste  and  judg- 
ment, consulted  by  Colley  Cibber  on  every  new  play  he  pro- 
duced, the  mother  of  Savage  was  not  only  wholly  destitute  of 
all  virtue,  but  of  all  shame.  One  day,  looking  out  of  the  win- 
dow, she  perceived  a  very  handsome  man  assaulted  by  some 
bailiffs  who  were  going  to  arrest  him :  she  paid  his  debt,  re- 
leased, and  married  him.  The  hero  of  this  story  was  Colonel 
Brett,  the  father  of  Anne  Brett. 

The  child  of  such  a  mother  was  not  likely  to  be  even  decent- 
ly respectable ;  and  Anne  was  proud  of  her  disgraceful  pre- 


176  ANNE   BRETT. — A    BITTEK   CUP. 

eminence  and  of  her  disgusting  and  royal  lover.  She  was  dark, 
and  her  flashing  black  eyes  resembled  those  of  a  Spanish  beau- 
ty. Ten  years  after  the  death  of  George  I.,  she  found  a  hus- 
band in  Sir  William  Leman,  of  Northall,  and  was  announced, 
on  that  occasion,  as  the  half-sister  of  Richard  Savage. 

To  the  society  of  this  woman,  when  at  St.  James's,  as  "  Mis- 
tress Brett,"  the  three  princesses  were  subjected :  at  the  same 
time  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  the  king's  German  mistress,  oc- 
cupied other  lodgings  at  St.  James's. 

Miss  Brett  was  to  be  rewarded  with  the  coronet  of  a  count- 
ess for  her  degradation,  the  king  being  absent  on  the  occasion 
at  Hanover;  elated  by  her  expectations,  she  took  the  liberty, 
during  his  majesty's  absence,  of  ordering  a  door  to  be  broken 
out  of  her  apartment  into  the  royal  garden,  where  the  prin- 
cesses walked.  The  Princess  Anne,  not  deigning  to  associate 
with  her,  commanded  that  it  should  be  forthwith  closed.  Miss 
Brett  imperiously  reversed  that  order.  In  the  midst  of  the 
affair,  the  king  died  suddenly,  and  Anne  Brett's  reign  was 
over,  and  her  influence  soon  as  much  forgotten  as  if  she  had 
never  existed.  The  Princess  Anne  was  pining  in  the  dullness 
of  her  royal  home,  when  a  marriage  with  the  Prince  of  Orange, 
was  proposed  for  the  consideration  of  his  parents.  It  was  a 
miserable  match  as  well  as  a  miserable  prospect,  for  the  prince's 
revenue  amounted  to  no  more  than  £12,000  a  year;  and  the 
state  and  pomp  to  which  the  Princess  Royal  had  been  accus- 
tomed could  not  be  contemplated  on  so  small  a  fortune.  It 
was  still  worse  in  point  of  that  poor  consideration,  happiness. 
The  Prince  of  Orange  was  both  deformed  and  disgusting  in 
his  person,  though  his  face  was  sensible  in  expression ;  and  if 
he  inspired  one  idea  more  strongly  than  another  when  he  ap- 
peared in  his  uniform  and  cocked  hat,  and  spoke  bad  French, 
or  worse  English,  it  was  that  of  seeing  before  one  a  dressed- 
up  baboon. 

It  was  a  bitter  cup  for  the  princess  to  drink,  but  she  drank 
it ;  she  reflected  that  it  might  be  the  only  way  of  quitting  a 
court  where,  in  case  of  her  father's  death,  she  would  be  de- 
pendent on  her  brother  Frederick,  or  on  that  weak  prince's 
strong-minded  wife.  So  she  consented,  and  took  the  dwarf; 
and  that  consent  was  regarded  by  a  grateful  people,  and  by 
all  good  courtiers,  as  a  sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  Protestant 
principles,  the  House  of  Orange  being,  par  excellence,  at  the 
head  of  the  orthodox  dynasties  of  Europe.  A  dowry  of 
£80,000  was  forthwith  granted  by  an  admiring  Commons — 
just  double  what  had  ever  been  given  before.  That  sum  was 
happily  lying  in  the  exchequer,  being  the  purchase-money  of 
some  lands  in  St.  Christopher's  which  had  lately  been  sold  ;  and 


THE   DARLING    OF   THE   FAMILY.  177 

King  George  was  thankful  to  get  rid  of  a  daughter  whose 
haughtiness  gave  him  trouble.  In  person,  too,  the  princess 
royal  was  not  very  ornamental  to  the  court.  She  was  ill- 
made,  with  a  propensity  to  grow  fat :  her  complexion,  other- 
wise very  fine,  was  marked  with  the  small-pox ;  she  had,  how- 
ever, a  lively,  clean  look — one  of  her  chief  beauties — and  a 
certain  royalty  of  manner. 

The  Princess  Amelia  died,  as  the  world  thought,  single,  but 
consoled  herself  with  various  love  flirtations.  The  Duke  of 
Newcastle  made  love  to  her,  but  her  affections  were  centred 
on  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  to  whom  she  was  privately  married, 
as  is  confidently  asserted. 

The  Princess  Caroline  was  the  darling  of  her  family.  Even 
the  king  relied  on  her  truth.  When  there  was  any  dispute, 
he  used  to  say,  "  Send  for  Caroline  ;  she  will  tell  us  the  right 
story." 

Her  fate  had  its  clouds.  Amiable,  gentle,  of  unbounded 
charity,  with  strong  affections,  which  were  not  suffered  to  flow 
in  a  legitimate  channel,  she  became  devotedly  attached  to 
Lord  Hervey:  her  heart  was  bound  up  in  him;  his  death 
drove  her  into  a  permanent  retreat  from  the  world.  No  de- 
basing connection  existed  between  them  ;  but  it  is  misery,  it  is 
sin  enough  to  love  another  woman's  husband — and  that  sin, 
that  misery,  was  the  lot  of  the  royal  and  otherwise  virtuous 
Caroline. 

The  Princess  Mary,  another  victim  to  conventionalities,  was 
united  to  Frederick,  Landgrave  of  Hesse  Cassel ;  a  barbarian, 
from  whom  she  escaped,  whenever  she  could,  to  come,  with  a 
bleeding  heart,  to  her  English  home.  She  was,  even  Horace 
Walpole  allows,  "  of  the  softest,  mildest  temper  in  the  world," 
and  fondly  beloved  by  her  sister  Caroline,  and  by  the  "  Butch- 
er of  Culloden,"  William,  Duke  of  Cumberland. 

Louisa  became  Queen  of  Denmark  in  1746,  after  some  years' 
marriage  to  the  Crown  Prince.  "  We  are  lucky,"  Horace  Wal- 
pole writes  on  that  occasion, "  in  the  death  of  kings." 

The  two  princesses  who  were  still  under  the  paternal  roof 
were  contrasts.  Caroline  was  a  constant  invalid,  gentle,  sin- 
cere, unambitious,  devoted  to  her  mother,  whose  death  nearly 
killed  her.  Amelia  affected  popularity,  and  assumed  the  esprit 
fort — was  fond  of  meddling  in  politics,  and  after  the  death  of 
her  mother,  joined  the  Bedford  faction,  in  opposition  to  her  fa- 
ther. But  both  these  princesses  were  outwardly  submissive 
when  Lord  Hervey  became  the  Queen's  chamberlain. 

The  evenings  at  St.  James's  were  spent  in  the  same  way  as 
those  at  Kensington. 

Quadrille  formed  her  majesty's  pastime,  and,  while  Lord 

H2 


178  EVENINGS   AT  ST.  JAMES'S. 

Hervey  played  pools  of  cribbage  with  the  Princess  Caroline 
and  the  maids  of  honor,  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  amused  him- 
self and  the  Princess  Amelia  at  "  buffet."  On  Mondays  and 
Fridays  there  were  drawing-rooms  held ;  and  these  receptions 
took  place,  very  wisely,  in  the  evening. 

Beneath  all  the  show  of  gayety  and  the  freezing  ceremony 
of  those  stately  occasions,  there  was  in  that  court  as  much 
misery  as  family  dissensions,  or,  to  speak  accurately,  family 
hatreds  can  engender.  Endless  jealousies,  which  seem  to  us 
as  frivolous  as  they  were  rabid ;  and  contentions,  of  which 
even  the  origin  is  still  unexplained,  had  long  severed  the 
queen  from  her  eldest  son.  George  II.  had  always  loved  his 
mother :  his  affection  for  the  unhappy  Sophia  Dorothea  was 
one  of  the  very  few  traits  of  goodness  in  a  character  utterly 
vulgar,  sensual,  and  entirely  selfish.  His  son,  Frederick,  Prince 
of  Wales,  on  the  other  hand,  hated  his  mother.  He  loved 
neither  of  his  parents ;  but  the  queen  had  the  pre-eminence  in 
his  aversion. 

The  king,  during  the  year  1736,  was  at  Hanover.  His  re- 
turn was  announced,  but  under  circumstances  of  danger.  A 
tremendous  storm  arose  just  as  he  was  prepared  to  embark  at 
Helvoetsluys.  All  London  was  on  the  look-out,  weather-cocks 
were  watched ;  tides,  winds,  and  moons  formed  the  only  sub- 
jects of  conversation ;  but  no  one  of  his  majesty's  subjects 
were  so  demonstrative  as  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  his  cheer- 
fulness, and  his  triumph  even,  on  the  occasion,  were  of  course 
resentfully  heard  of  by  the  queen. 

During  the  storm,  when  anxiety  had  almost  amounted  to 
fever,  Lord  Hervey  dined  with  Sir  Robert  Walpole.  Their 
conversation  naturally  turned  on  the  state  of  affairs,  prospect- 
ively.  Sir  Robert  called  the  Prince  a  "poor,  weak,  -  irreso- 
lute, false,  lying,  contemptible  wretch."  Lord  Hervey  did  not 
defend  him,  but  suggested  that  Frederick,  in  case  of  his  fa- 
ther's death,  might  be  more  influenced  by  the  queen  than  he 
had  hitherto  been.  "  Zounds,  my  lord,"  interrupted  Sir  Rob- 
ert, "  he  would  tear  the  flesh  off  her  bones  with  red-hot  irons 
sooner !  The  distinctions  she  shows  to  you,  too,  I  believe, 
would  not  be  forgotten.  Then  the  notion  he  has  of  his  great 
riches,  and  the  desire  he  has  of  fingering  them,  would  make 
him  pinch  her,  and  pinch  her  again,  in  order  to  make  her  buy 
her  ease,  till  she  had  not  a  groat  left." 

What  a  picture  of  a  heartless  and  selfish  character !  The 
next  day  the  queen  sent  for  Lord  Hervey,  to  ask  him  if  he 
knew  the  particulars  of  a  great  dinner  which  the  prince  had 
given  to  the  lord  mayor  the  previous  day,  while  the  whole 
country,  and  the  court  in  particular,  was  trembling  for  the 


AMELIA    SOPHIA   WALMODEN.  179 

safety  of  the  king,  his  father.  Lord  Hervey  told  her  that  the 
prince's  speech  at  the  dinner  was  the  most  ingratiating  piece 
of  popularity  ever  heard;  the  healths,  of  course,  as  usual. 
"Heavens!"  cried  the  queen:  "popularity  always  makes  me 
sick,  but  Friths  popularity  makes  me  vomit !  I  hear  that  yester- 
day, on  the  prince's  side  of  the  House,  they  talked  of  the  king's 
being  cast  away  with  the  same  sang  froid  as  you  would  talk 
of  an  overturn ;  and  that  my  good  son  strutted  about  as  if  he 
had  been  already  king.  Did  you  mark  the  airs  with  which  he 
came  into  my  drawing-room  in  the  morning  ?  though  he  does 
not  think  fit  to  honor  me  with  his  presence,  or  ennui  me  with 
his  wife's,  of  an  evening.  I  felt  something  here  in  my  throat 
that  swelled  and  half  choked  me." 

Poor  Queen  Caroline !  with  such  a  son,  and  such  a  husband, 
she  must  have  been  possessed  of  a  more  than  usual  share  of 
German  imperturbability  to  sustain  her  cheerfulness,  writhing, 
as  she  often  was,  under  the  pangs  of  a  long-concealed  disorder, 
of  which  eventually  she  died.  Even  on  the  occasion  of  the 
king's  return  in  time  to  spend  his  birthday  in  England,  the 
queen's  temper  had  been  sorely  tried.  Nothing  had  ever 
vexed  her  more  than  the  king's  admiration  for  Amelia  Sophia 
Walmoden,  who,  after  the  death  of  Caroline,  was  created 
Countess  of  Yarmouth.  Madame  Walmoden  had  been  a 
reigning  belle  among  the  young  married  women  at  Hanover, 
when  George  II.  visited  that  country  in  1735.  Not  that  her 
majesty's  affections  were  wounded  ;  it  was  her  pride  that  was 
hurt  by  the  idea  that  people  would  think  that  this  Hanoverian 
lady  had  more  influence  than  she  had.  In  other  respects  the 
king's  absence  was  a  relief:  she  had  the  eclat  of  the  regency; 
she  had  the  comfort  of  having  the  hours  which  her  royal  tor- 
ment decreed  were  to  be  passed  in  amusing  his  dullness,  to 
herself;  she  was  free  from  his  "  quotidian  sallies  of  temper, 
which,"  as  Lord  Hervey  relates,  "  let  it  be  charged  by  what 
hand  it  would,  used  always  to  discharge  its  hottest  fire,  on 
some  pretense  or  other,  upon  her." 

It  is  quite  true  that  from  the  first  dawn  of  his  preference  for 
Madame  Walmoden,  the  king  wrote  circumstantial  letters  of 
fifty  or  sixty  pages  to  the  queen,  informing  her  of  every  stage 
of  the  affair ;  the  queen,  in  reply,  saying  that  she  was  only  one 
woman,  and  an  old  woman,  and  adding,  "  that  he  might  love 
more  and  younger  women"  In  return,  the  king  wrote, "  You 
must  love  the  Walmoden,  for  she  loves  you  /"  a  civil  insult, 
which  he  accompanied  with  so  minute  a  description  of  his  new 
favorite,  that  the  queen,  had  she  been  a  painter,  might  have 
drawn  her  portrait  at  a  hundred  miles'  distance. 

The  queen,  subservient  as  she  seemed,  felt  the  humiliation. 


180  POOR  QUEEN  CAROLINE! 

Such  was  the  debased  nature  of  George  II.  that  lie  not  only 
wrote  letters  unworthy  of  a  man  to  write,  and  unfit  for  a 
woman  to  read,  to  his  wife,  but  he  desired  her  to  show  them 
to  Sir  Robert  Walpole.  He  used  to  "  tag  several  paragraphs," 
as  Lord  Hervey  expresses  it,  with  these  words,  "  Montrez  ceci, 
et  consultez  la-dessus  de  gros  homme"  meaning  Sir  Robert. 
But  this  was  only  a  portion  of  the  disgusting  disclosures 
made  by  the  vulgar,  licentious  monarch  to  his  too  degraded 
consort. 

In  the  bitterness  of  her  mortification  the  queen  consulted 
Lord  Hervey  and  Sir  Robert  as  to  the  possibility  of  her  losing 
her  influence,  should  she  resent  the  king's  delay  in  returning. 
They  agreed,  that  her  taking  the  "Jiere  turn"  would  ruin  her 
with  her  royal  consort ;  Sir  Robert  adding,  that  if  he  had  a 
mind  to  flatter  her  into  her  ruin,  he  might  talk  to  her  as  if  she 
were  twenty-five,  and  try  to  make  her  imagine  that  she  could 
bring  the  king  back  by  the  apprehension  of  losing  her  affec- 
tion. He  said  it  was  now  too  late  in  her  life  to  try  new  meth- 
ods ;  she  must  persist  in  the  soothing,  coaxing,  submissive  arts 
which  had  been  practiced  with  success,  and  even  press  his 
majesty  to  bring  this  woman  to  England !  "  He  taught  her," 
says  Lord  Hervey,  "this  hard  lesson  till  she  wept."  Never- 
theless, the  queen  expressed  her  gratitude  to  the  minister  for 
his  advice.  "  My  lord,"  said  Walpole  to  Hervey,  "  she  laid 
her  thanks  on  me  so  thick  that  I  found  I  had  gone  too  far,  for 
I  am  never  so  much  afraid  of  her  rebukes  as  of  her  commend- 
ations." 

Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  between  this  singular  couple. 
Nevertheless,  the  queen,  not  from  attachment  to  the  king,  but 
from  the  horror  she  had  of  her  son's  reigning,  felt  such  fears 
of  the  prince's  succeeding  to  the  throne  as  she  could  hardly 
express.  He  would,  she  was  convinced,  do  all  he  could  to 
ruin  and  injure  her  in  case  of  his  accession  to  the  throne. 

The  consolation  of  such  a  friend  as  Lord  Hervey  can  easily 
be  conceived,  when  he  told  her  majesty  that  he  had  resolved, 
in  case  the  king  had  been  lost  at  sea,  to  have  retired  from  her 
service,  in  order  to  prevent  any  jealousy  or  irritation  that 
might  arise  from  his  supposed  influence  with  her  majesty. 
The  queen  stopped  him  short,  and  said,  "  No,  my  lord,  I  should 
never  have  suffered  that;  you  are  one  of  the  greatest  pleasures 
of  my  life.  But  did  I  love  you  less  than  I  do,  or  less  like  to 
have  you  about  me,  I  should  look  upon  the  suffering  you  to  be 
taken  from  me  as  such  a  meanness  and  baseness  that  you  should 
not  have  stirred  an  inch  from  me.  You,"  she  added,  "  should 
have  gone  with  me  to  Somerset  House"  (which  was  hers  in 
case  of  the  king's  death).  She  then  told  him  she  should  have 


NOCTURNAL   DIVERSIONS    OF   MAIDS    OP   HONOE.  181 

begged  Sir  Robert  Walpole  on  her  knees  not  to  have  sent  in 
his  resignation. 

The  animosity  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  Lord  Hervey  aug- 
mented, there  can  be  no  doubt,  his  unnatural  aversion  to  the 
queen,  an  aversion  which  he  evinced  early  in  life.  There  was 
a  beautiful,  giddy  maid  of  honor,  who  attracted  not  only  the 
attention  of  Frederick,  but  the  rival  attentions  of  other  suitors, 
and  among  them,  the  most  favored  was  said  to  be  Lord  Her- 
vey, notwithstanding  that  he  had  then  been  for  some  years  the 
husband  of  one  of  the  loveliest  ornaments  of  the  court,  the 
sensible  and  virtuous  Mary  Lepel.  Miss  Yane  became  event- 
ually the  avowed  favorite  of  the  prince,  and  after  giving  birth 
to  a  son,  who  was  christened  FitzFrederick  Yane,  and  who 
died  in  1736,  his  unhappy  mother  died  a  few  months  after- 
ward. It  is  melancholy  to  read  a  letter  from  Lady  Hervey  to 
Mrs.  Howard,  portraying  the  frolic  and  levity  of  this  once  joy- 
ous creature,  among  the  other  maids  of  honor ;  and  her  stric- 
tures show  at  once  the  unrefined  nature  of  the  pranks  in  which 
they  indulged,  and  her  once  sobriety  of  demeanor. 

She  speaks,  on  one  occasion,  in  which,  however,  Miss  Yane 
did  not  share  the  nocturnal  diversion,  of  some  of  the  maids  of 
honor  being  out  in  the  winter  all  night  in  the  gardens  at  Ken- 
sington— opening  and  rattling  the  windows,  and  trying  to 
frighten  people  out  of  their  wits ;  and  she  gives  Mrs.  Howard 
a  hint  that  the  queen  ought  to  be  informed  of  the  way  in 
which  her  young  attendants  amused  themselves.  After  levi- 
ties such  as  these,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  poor  Miss  Yane 
writing  to  Mrs.  Howard,  with  complaints  that  she  was  unjust- 
ly aspersed,  and  referring  to  her  relatives,  Lady  Betty  Night- 
ingale and  Lady  Hewet,  in  testimony  of  the  falsehood  of  re- 
ports which,  unhappily,  the  event  verified. 

The  prince,  however,  never  forgave  Lord  Hervey  for  being 
his  rival  with  Miss  Yane,  nor  his  mother  for  her  favors  to  Lord 
Hervey.  In  vain  did  the  queen  endeavor  to  reconcile  Fritz,  as 
she  called  him,  to  his  father ;  nothing  could  be  done  in  a  case 
where  the  one  wras  all  dogged  selfishness,  and  where  the  other, 
the  idol  of  the  opposition  party,  as  the  prince  had  ever  been, 
so  legere  de  tete  as  to  swallow  all  the  adulation  offered  to  him, 
and  to  believe  himself  a  demigod.  "  The  queen's  dread  of  a 
rival,"  Horace  Walpole  remarks,  "  was  a  feminine  weakness : 
the  behavior  of  her  eldest  son  was  a  real  thorn."  Some  time 
before  his  marriage  to  a  princess  who  was  supposed  to  aug- 
ment his  hatred  of  his  mother,  Frederick  of  Wales  had  con- 
templated an  act  of  disobedience.  Soon  after  his  arrival  in 
England,  Sarah,  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  hearing  that  he  was 
in  want  of  money,  had  sent  to  offer  him  her  granddaughter, 


182  MAEY  LEPEL,  LADY  HERVEY. 

Lady  Diana  Spencer,  with  a  fortune  of  £100,000.  The  prince 
accepted  the  young  lady,  and  a  day  was  fixed  for  his  marriage 
in  the  duchess's  lodge  at  the  Great  Park,  Windsor.  But  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  getting  intelligence  of  the  plot,  the  nuptials 
were  stopped.  The  duchess  never  forgave  either  Walpole  or 
the  royal  family,  and  took  an  early  opportunity  of  insulting  the 
latter.  When  the  Prince  of  Orange  came  over  to  marry  the 
princess  royal,  a  sort  of  boarded  gallery  was  erected  from  the 
windows  of  the  great  drawing-room  of  that  palace,  and  was 
constructed  so  as  to  cross  the  garden  to  the  Lutheran  chapel 
in  the  Friary,  where  the  duchess  lived.  The  Prince  of  Orange 
being  ill,  went  to  Bath,  and  the  marriage  was  delayed  for  some 
weeks.  Meantime  the  windows  of  Marlborough  House  were 
darkened  by  the  gallery.  "  I  wonder,"  cried  the  old  duchess, 
"  when  my  neighbor  George  will  take  away  his  orange-chest !" 
the  structure,  with  its  pent-house  roof,  really  resembling  an  or- 
ange-chest. 

Mary  Lepel,  Lady  Hervey,  whose  attractions,  great  as  they 
were,  proved  insufficient  to  rivet  the  exclusive  admiration  of 
the  accomplished  Hervey,  had  become  his  wife  in  1720,  some 
time  before  her  husband  had  been  completely  enthralled  with 
the  gilded  prison  doors  of  a  court.  She  was  endowed  with 
that  intellectual  beauty  calculated  to  attract  a  man  of  talent : 
she  was  highly  educated,  of  great  talent ;  possessed  of  savoir 
faire,  infinite  good  temper,  and  a  strict  sense  of  duty.  She 
also  derived  from  her  father,  Brigadier  Lepel,  who  was  of  an 
ancient  family  in  Sark,  a  considerable  fortune.  Good  and  cor- 
rect as  she  was,  Lady  Hervey  viewed  with  a  fashionable  com- 
posure the  various  intimacies  formed  during  the  course  of  their 
married  life  by  his  lordship. 

The  fact  is,  that  the  aim  of  both  was  not  so  much  to  insure 
their  domestic  felicity  as  to  gratify  their  ambition.  Probably 
they  were  disappointed  in  both  these  aims — certainly  in  one 
of  them :  talented,  indefatigable,  popular,  lively,  and  courteous, 
Lord  Hervey,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  advocated  in  vain, 
in  brilliant  orations,  the  measures  of  Walpole.  Twelve  years, 
fourteen  years  elapsed,  and  he  was  left  in  the  somewhat  sub- 
ordinate position  of  vice-chamberlain,  in  spite  of  that  high  or- 
der of  talents  which  he  possessed,  and  which  would  have  been 
displayed  to  advantage  in  a  graver  scene.  The  fact  has  been 
explained :  the  queen  could  not  do  without  him ;  she  confided 
in  him  ;  her  daughter  loved  him ;  and  his  influence  in  that  court 
was  too  powerful  for  Walpole  to  dispense  with  an  aid  so  valu- 
able to  his  own  plans.  Some  episodes  in  a  life  thus  frittered 
away,  until,  too  late,  promotion  came,  alleviated  his  existence, 
and  gave  his  wife  only  a  passing  uneasiness,  if  even  indeed  they 
imparted  a  pang. 


RIVALRY.  183 

One  of  these  was  his  dangerous  passion  for  Miss  Vane ;  an- 
other, his  platonic  attachment  to  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu. 

While  he  lived  on  the  terms  with  his  wife  which  is  described 
even  by  the  French  as  being  a  "Menage  de  Paris"  Lord  Her- 
vey  found  in  another  quarter  the  sympathies  which,  as  a  hus- 
band, he  was  too  well-bred  to  require.  It  is  probable  that  he 
always  admired  his  wife  more  than  any  other  person,  for  she 
had  qualities  that  were  quite  congenial  to  the  tastes  of  a  wit 
and  a  beau  in  those  times.  Lady  Hervey  was  not  only  singu- 
larly captivating,  young,  gay,  and  handsome ;  but  a  complete 
model  also  of  the  polished,  courteous,  high-bred  woman  of 
fashion.  Her  manners  are  said  by  Lady  Louisa  Stuart  to  have 
"  had  a  foreign  tinge,  which  some  called  affected ;  but  they 
were  gentle,  easy,  and  altogether  exquisitely  pleasing."  She 
was  in  secret  a  Jacobite — and  resembled  in  that  respect  most 
of  the  fine  ladies  in  Great  Britain.  Whiggery  and  Walpolism 
were  vulgar :  it  was  haut  ton  to  take  offense  when  James  II. 
was  anathematized,  and  quite  good  taste  to  hint  that  some 
people  wished  well  to  the  Chevalier's  attempts :  and  this  way 
of  speaking  owed  its  fashion  probably  to  Frederick  of  Wales, 
whose  interest  in  Flora  Macdonald,  and  whose  concern  for  the 
exiled  family,  were  among  the  few  amiable  traits  of  his  dispo- 
sition. Perhaps  they  arose  from  a  wish  to  plague  his  parents, 
rather  than  from  a  greatness  of  character  foreign  to  this  prince. 

Lady  Hervey  was  in  the  bloom  of  youth,  Lady  Mary  in  the 
zenith  of  her  age,  when  they  became  rivals :  Lady  Mary  had 
once  excited  the  jealousy  of  Queen  Caroline  when  Princess  of 
Wales. 

"  How  becomingly  Lady  Mary  is  dressed  to-night,"  whis- 
pered George  II.  to  his  wife,  whom  he  had  called  up  from  the 
card-table  to  impart  to  her  that  important  conviction.  "Lady 
Mary  always  dresses  well,"  was  the  cold  and  curt  reply. 

Lord  Hervey  had  been  married  about  seven  years  when  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu  reappeared  at  the  court  of  Queen  Car- 
oline, after  her  long  residence  in  Turkey.  Lord  Hervey  was 
thirty  -  three  years  of  age ;  Lady  Mary  was  verging  on  forty. 
She  was  still  a  pretty  woman,  with  a  piquant,  neat-featured 
face  ;  which  does  not  seem  to  have  done  any  justice  to  a  mind 
at  once  masculine  and  sensitive,  nor  to  a  heart  capable  of  be- 
nevolence— capable  of  strong  attachments,  and  of  bitter  hatred. 

Like  Lady  Hervey,  she  lived  with  her  husband  on  well-bred 
terms :  there  existed  no  quarrel  between  them ;  no  avowed 
ground  of  coldness ;  it  was  the  icy  boundary  of  frozen  feeling 
that  severed  them  ;  the  sure  and  lasting  though  polite  destroy- 
er of  all  bonds,  indifference.  Lady  Mary  was  full  of  repartee, 
of  poetry,  of  anecdote,  and  was  not  averse  to  admiration ;  but 


184  RELAXATIONS   OF   THE   ROYAL   HOUSEHOLD. 

she  was  essentially  a  woman  of  common  sense,  of  views  en- 
larged by  travel,  and  of  ostensibly  good  principles.  A  woman 
of  delicacy  was  not  to  be  found  in  those  days,  any  more  than 
other  productions  of  the  nineteenth  century :  a  telegraphic  mes- 
sage would  have  been  almost  as  startling  to  a  courtly  ear  as 
the  refusal  of  a  fine  lady  to  suffer  a  double  entendre.  Lady 
Mary  was  above  all  scruples,  and  Lord  Hervey,  who  had  lived 
too  long  with  George  II.  and  his  queen  to  have  the  moral 
sense  in  perfection,  liked  her  all  the  better  for  her  courage — 
her  merry,  licentious  jokes,  and  her  putting  things  down  by 
their  right  names,  on  which  Lady  Mary  plumed  herself:  she 
was  what  they  term  in  the  north  of  England  "  Emancipated." 
They  formed  an  old  acquaintance  with  a  confidential,  if  not  a 
tender  friendship ;  and  that  their  intimacy  was  unpleasant  to 
Lady  Hervey  was  proved  by  her  refusal — when,  after  the  grave 
had  closed  over  Lord  Hervey,  late  in  life,  Lady  Mary  ill,  and 
broken  down  by  age,  returned  to  die  in  England — to  resume 
an  acquaintance  which  had  been  a  painful  one  to  her. 

Lord  Hervey  was  a  martyr  to  illness  of  an  epileptic  charac- 
ter ;  and  Lady  Mary  gave  him  her  sympathy.  She  was  some- 
what of  a  doctor — and  being  older  than  her  friend,  may  have 
had  the  art  of  soothing  sufferings,  wrhich  were  the  worse  be- 
cause they  were  concealed.  While  he  writhed  in  pain,  he  was 
obliged  to  give  vent  to  his  agony  by  alleging  that  an  attack  of 
cramp  bent  him  double :  yet  he  lived  by  rule — a  rule  harder  to 
adhere  to  than  that  of  the  most  conscientious  homeopath  in  the 
present  day.  In  the  midst  of  court  gayeties  and  the  duties  of 
office,  he  thus  wrote  to  Dr.  Cheyne : 

..."  To  let  you  know  that  I  continue  one  of  your  most  pious 
votaries,  and  to  tell  you  the  method  I  am  in.  In  the  first 
place,  I  never  take  wine  nor  malt  drink,  nor  any  liquid  but 
water  and  milk-tea ;  in  the  next,  I  eat  no  meat  but  the  whitest, 
youngest,  and  tenderest,  nine  times  in  ten  nothing  but  chicken, 
and  never  more  than  the  quantity  of  a  small  one  at  a  meal. 
I  seldom  eat  any  supper,  but  if  any,  nothing  absolutely  but 
bread  and  water ;  two  days  in  the  week  I  eat  no  flesh ;  my 
breakfast  is  dry  biscuit,  not  sweet,  and  green  tea ;  I  have  left 
off  butter  as  bilious ;  I  eat  no  salt,  nor  any  sauce  but  bread- 
sauce." 

Among  the  most  cherished  relaxations  of  the  royal  house- 
hold were  visits  to  Twickenham,  while  the  court  was  at  Rich- 
mond. The  River  Thames,  which  has  borne  on  its  waves  so 
much  misery  in  olden  times — which  was  the  highway  from  the 
Star-chamber  to  the  Tower — which  has  been  belabored  in  our 
days  with  so  much  wealth,  and  sullied  with  so  much  impurity ; 
that  river,  whose  current  is  one  hour  rich  as  the  stream  of  a 


POPE   AT   HIS   VILLA— DISTINGUISHED   VISITORS. 


BACON'S  OPINION  OF  TWICKENHAM.  187 

gold  river,  the  next  hour  foul  as  the  pestilent  church-yard — 
was  then,  especially  between  Richmond  and  Teddington,  a 
glassy,  placid  stream,  reflecting  on  its  margin  the  chestnut- 
trees  of  stately  Ham,  and  the  reeds  and  wild  flowers  which 
grew  undisturbed  in  the  fertile  meadows  of  Petersham. 

Lord  Hervey,  with  the  ladies  of  the  court,  Mrs.  Howard  as 
their  chaperon,  delighted  in  being  wafted  to  that  village,  so 
rich  in  names  which  give  to  Twickenham  undying  associations 
with  the  departed  great.  Sometimes  the  effeminate  valetudi- 
narian, Hervey,  was  content  to  attend  the  Princess  Caroline 
to  Marble  Hill  only,  a  villa  residence  built  by  George  II.  for 
Mrs.  Howard,  and  often  referred  to  in  the  correspondence  of 
that  period.  Sometimes  the  royal  barge,  with  its  rowers  in 
scarlet  jackets,  was  seen  conveying  the  gay  party ;  ladies  in 
slouched  hats,  pointed  over  fair  brows  in  front,  with  a  fold  of 
sarcenet  round  them,  terminated  in  a  long  bow  and  ends  be- 
hind— with  deep  falling  mantles  over  dresses  never  cognizant 
of  crinoline :  gentlemen,  with  cocked  hats,  their  bag-wigs  and 
ties  appearing  behind ;  and  beneath  their  puce-colored  coats, 
delicate  silk  tights  and  gossamer  stockings  were  visible,  as  they 
trod  the  mossy  lawn  of  the  Palace  Gardens  at  Richmond,  or, 
followed  by  a  tiny  greyhound,  prepared  for  the  lazy  pleasures 
of  the  day. 

Sometimes  the  visit  was  private ;  the  sickly  Princess  Caro- 
line had  a  fancy  to  make  one  of  the  group  who  are  bound  to 
Pope's  villa.  Twickenham,  where  that  great  little  man  had, 
since  1715,  established  himself,  was  pronounced  by  Lord  Ba- 
con to  be  the  finest  place  in  the  world  for  study.  "  Let  Twit- 
nam  Park,"  he  wrote  to  his  steward,  Thomas  Bushell,  "  which 
I  sold  in  my  younger  days,  be  purchased,  if  possible,  for  a 
residence  for  such  deserving  persons  to  study  in  (since  I  ex^ 
perimentally  found  the  situation  of  that  place  much  convenient 
for  the  trial  of  my  philosophical  conclusions) — -expressed  in  a 
paper  sealed,  to  the  trust — which  I  myself  had  put  in  practice, 
and  settled  the  same  by  act  of  parliament,  if  the  vicissitudes 
of  fortune  had  not  intervened  and  prevented  me." 

Twickenham  continued,  long  after  Bacon  had  penned  this 
injunction,  to  be  the  retreat  of  the  poet,  the  statesman,  the 
scholar ;  the  haven  where  the  retired  actress  and  broken  novel- 
ist found  peace ;  the  abode  of  Henry  Fielding,  who  lived  in 
one  of  the  back  streets ;  the  temporary  refuge,  from  the  world 
of  London,  of  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  and  the  life-long 
home  of  Pope. 

Let  us  picture  to  ourselves  a  visit  from  the  princess  to 
Pope's  villa :  As  the  barge,  following  the  gentle  bendings  of 
the  river,  nears  Twickenham,  a  richer  green,  a  summer  bright- 


188 

ness,  indicates  it  is  approaching  that  spot  of  which  even  Bish- 
op Warburton  says  that  the  "beauty  of  the  owner's  poetic  gen- 
ius appeared  to  as  much  advantage  in  the  disposition  of  these 
romantic  materials  as  in  any  of  his  best-contrived  poems." 
And  the  loved  toil  which  formed  the  quincunx,  which  perfora- 
ted and  extended  the  grotto  until  it  extended  across  the  road 
to  a  garden  on  the  opposite  side — the  toil  which  showed  the 
gentler  parts  of  Pope's  better  nature — has  been  respected,  and 
its  effects  preserved.  The  enameled  lawn,  green  as  no  other 
grass  save  that  by  the  Thames  side  is  green,  is  swept  still  by 
the  light  boughs  of  the  famed  willow.  Every  memorial  of  the 
bard  was  treasured  by  the  gracious  hands  into  which,  after 
1744,  the  classic  spot  fell — those  of  Sir  William  Stanhope. 

In  the  subterranean  passage  this  verse  appears ;  adulatory, 
it  must  be  confessed  : 

"The  humble  roof,  the  garden's  scanty  line, 
111  suit  the  genius  of  the  bard  divine ; 
But  fancy  now  assumes  a  fairer  scope, 
And  Stanhope's  plans  unfold  the  soul  of  Pope." 

It  should  have  been  Stanhope's  "  gold" — a  metal  which  was 
not  so  abundant,  nor  indeed  so  much  wanted  in  Pope's  time 
as  in  our  own. 

As  the  barge  is  moored  close  to  the  low  steps  which  lead 
up  from  the  river  to  the  villa,  a  diminutive  figure,  then  in  its 
prime  (if  prime  it  ever  had),  is  seen  moving  impatiently  for- 
ward. By  that  young-old  face,  with  its  large  lucid  speaking 
eyes  that  light  it  up,  as  does  a  rushlight  in  a  cavern — by  that 
twisted  figure  with  its  emaciated  legs — by  the  large,  sensible 
mouth,  the  pointed,  marked,  well-defined  nose — by  the  wig,  or 
hair  pushed  off  in  masses  from  the  broad  forehead  and  falling 
behind  in  tresses — by  the  dress,  that  loose,  single-breasted 
black  coat — by  the  cambric  band  and  plaited  shirt,  without  a 
frill,  but  fine  and  white,  for  the  poor  poet  has  taken  infinite 
pains  that  day  in  self-adornment — by  the  delicate  ruffle  on  that 
large  thin  hand,  and  still  more  by  the  clear,  most  musical  voice 
which  is  heard  welcoming  his  royal  and  noble  guests,  as  he 
stands  bowing  low  to  the  Princess  Caroline,  and  bending  to 
kiss  hands — by  that  voice  which  gained  him  more  especially 
the  name  of  the  little  nightingale — is  Pope  at  once  recognized, 
and  Pope  in  the  perfection  of  his  days,  in  the  very  zenith  of 
his  fame. 

One  would  gladly  have  been  a  sprite  to  listen  from  some 
twig  of  that  then  stripling  willow  which  the  poet  had  planted 
with  his  own  hand,  to  the  talk  of  those  who  chatted  for  a 
while  under  its  shade,  before  they  went  in-doors  to  an  elegant 
dinner  at  the  usual  hour  of  twelve.  How  delightful  to  hear, 


THE    ESSENCE    OP    SMALL  TALK.  189 

unseen,  the  repartees  of  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  who 
comes  down,  it  is  natural  to  conclude,  from  her  villa  near  to 
that  of  Pope.  How  fine  a  study  might  one  not  draw  of  the 
fine  gentleman  and  the  wit  in  Lord  Hervey,  as  he  is  com- 
manded by  the  gentle  Princess  Caroline  to  sit  on  her  right 
hand;  but  his  heart  is  across  the  table  with  Lady  Mary! 
How  amusing  to  observe  the  dainty  but  not  sumptuous  repast 
contrived  with  Pope's  exquisite  taste,  but  regulated  by  his 
habitual  economy — for  his  late  father,  a  worthy  Jacobite  hat- 
ter, erst  in  the  Strand,  disdained  to  invest  the  fortune  he  had 
amassed,  from  the  extensive  sale  of  cocked  hats,  in  the  Funds, 
over  which  a  Hanoverian  stranger  ruled  ;  but  had  lived  on  his 
capital  of  £20,000,  as  spendthrifts  do  (without  either  moral, 
religious,  or  political  reasons),  as  long  as  it  lasted  him;  yet  he 
was  no  spendthrift.  Let  us  look,  therefore,  with  a  liberal  eye, 
noting,  as  we  stand,  how  that  fortune,  in  league  with  nature, 
who  made  the  poet  crooked,  had  maimed  two  of  his  fingers, 
such  time  as,  passing  a  bridge,  the  poor  little  poet  was  over- 
turned into  the  river,  and  he  would  have  been  drowned,  had 
not  the  postillion  broken  the  coach  window  and  dragged  the 
tiny  body  through  the  aperture.  We  mark,  however,  that  he 
generally  contrives  to  hide  this  defect,  as  he  would  fain  have 
hidden  every  other  from  the  lynx  eyes  of  Lady  Mary,  who 
knows  him,  however,  thoroughly,  and  reads  every  line  of  that 
poor  little  heart  of  his,  enamored  of  her  as  it  was. 

Then  the  conversation  !  How  gladly  would  we  catch  here 
some  drops  of  what  must  have  been  the  very  essence  of  small- 
talk,  and  small-talk  is  the  only  thing  fit  for  early  dinners !  Our 
host  is  noted  for  his  easy  address,  his  engaging  manners,  his 
delicacy,  politeness,  and  a  certain  tact  he  had  of  showing  ev- 
ery guest  that  he  was  welcome  in  the  choicest  expressions  and 
most  elegant  terms.  Then  Lady  Mary !  how  brilliant  is  her 
slightest  turn !  how  she  banters  Pope — how  she  gives  double 
entendre  for  double  entendre  to  Hervey !  How  sensible,  yet 
how  gay  is  all  she  says ;  how  bright,  how  cutting,  yet  how 
polished  is  the  equivoque  of  the  witty,  high-bred  Hervey  !  He 
is  happy  that  day — away  from  the  coarse,  passionate  king, 
whom  he  hated  with  a  hatred  that  burns  itself  out  in  his  lord- 
ship's "  Memoirs ;"  away  from  the  somewhat  exacting  and 
pitiable  queen ;  away  from  the  hated  Pelham,  and  the  rival 
Graft-on. 

And  conversation  never  flags  when  all,  more  or  less,  are 
congenial ;  when  all  are  well-informed,  well-bred,  and  resolved 
to  please.  Yet  there  is  a  canker  in  that  whole  assembly ;  that 
canker  is  a  want  of  confidence :  no  one  trusts  the  other ;  Lady 
Mary's  encouragement  of  Hervey  surprises  and  shocks  the 


190 

Princess  Caroline,  who  loves  him  secretly ;  Hervey's  atten- 
tions to  the  queen  of  letters  scandalize  Pope,  who  soon  after- 
ward makes  a  declaration  to  Lady  Mary.  Pope  writhes  un- 
der a  lash,  just  held  over  him  by  Lady  Mary's  hand.  Hervey 
feels  that  the  poet,  though  all  suavity,  is  ready  to  demolish 
him  at  any  moment,  if  he  can;  and  the  only  really  happy  and 
complacent  person  of  the  whole  party  is,  perhaps,  Pope's  old 
mother,  who  sits  in  the  room  next  to  that  occupied  for  din- 
ner, industriously  spinning. 

This  happy  state  of  things  came,  however,  as  is  often  the 
case,  in  close  intimacies,  to  a  painful  conclusion.  There  was 
too  little  reality,  too  little  earnestness  of  feeling,  for  the  friend- 
ship between  Pope  and  Lady  Mary,  including  Lord  Hervey,  to 
last  long.  His  lordship  had  his  affectations,  and  his  effeminate 
nicety  was  proverbial.  One  day  being  asked  at  dinner  if  he 
would  take  some  beef,  he  is  reported  to  have  answered,  "Beef? 
oh,  no !  faugh !  don't  you  know  I  never  eat  beef,  nor  horse,  nor 
curry,  nor  any  of  those  things  ?"  Poor  man !  it  was  probably 
a  pleasant  way  of  turning  off  what  he  may  have  deemed  an  as- 
sault on  a  digestion  that  could  hardly  conquer  any  solid  food. 
This  affectation  offended  Lady  Mary,  whose  mot,  that  there 
were  three  species,  "Men,  women,  and  Herveys,"  implies  a  per- 
fect perception  of  the  eccentricities  even  of  her  gifted  friend, 
Lord  Hervey,  whose  mother's  friend  she  had  been,  and  the  ob 
ject  of  whose  admiration  she  undoubtedly  was. 

Pope,  who  was  the  most  irritable  of  men,  never  forgot  or 
forgave  even  the  most  trifling  offense.  Lady  Bolingbroke  truly 
said  of  him,  that  he  played  the  politician  about  cabbages  and 
salads,  and  every  body  agrees  that  he  could  hardly  tolerate  the 
wit  that  was  more  successful  than  his  own.  It  was  about  the 
year  1725  that  he  began  to  hate  Lord  Hervey  with  such  a  ha- 
tred as  only  he  could  feel ;  it  was  unmitigated  by  a  single  touch 
of  generosity  or  of  compassion.  Pope  afterward  owned  that 
his  acquaintance  with  Lady  Mary  and  with  Hervey  was  discon- 
tinued, merely  because  they  had  too  much  wit  for  him.  To- 
ward the  latter  end  of  1732,  "The  Imitation  of  the  Second  Sat- 
ire of  the  First  Book  of  Horace,"  appeared,  and  in  it  Pope  at- 
tacked Lady  Mary  with  the  grossest  and  most  indecent  couplet 
ever  printed :  she  was  called  Sappho,  and  Hervey,  Lord  Fanny ; 
and  all  the  world  knew  the  characters  at  once. 

In  retaliation  for  this  satire,  appeared  "  Verses  to  the  Imita- 
tor of  Horace ;"  said  to  have  been  the  joint  production  of  Lord 
Hervey  and  Lady  Mary.  This  was  followed  by  a  piece  enti- 
tled "  Letter  from  a  Nobleman  at  Hampton  Court  to  a  Doctor 
of  Divinity."  To  this  composition  Lord  Hervey,  its  sole  au- 
thor, added  these  lines,  by  way,  as  it  seems,  of  extenuation. 


POPE'S    QUAEEEL   WITH   HEEVEY   AND   LADY   MAEY.       191 

Pope's  first  reply  was  in  a  prose  letter,  on  which  Dr.  John- 
son has  passed  a  condemnation.  "  It  exhibits,"  he  says,  "noth- 
ino-  but  tedious  malignity."  But  he  was  partial  to  the  Her- 
veys,  Thomas  and  Henry  Hervey,  Lord  Hervey's  brothers,  hav- 
ing been  kind  to  him — "  If  you  call  a  dog  Hervey"  he  said  to 
Boswell,  "I  shall  love  him." 

Next  came  the  epistle  to  Dr.  Arbuthnot,  in  which  every  in- 
firmity and  peculiarity  of  Hervey  are  handed  down  in  calm, 
cruel  irony,  and  polished  verses,  to  posterity.  The  verses  are 
almost  too  disgusting  to  be  revived  in  an  age  which  disclaims 
scurrility.  After  the  most  personal  rancorous  invective,  he  thus 
writes  of  Lord  Hervey's  conversation  : 

"His  wit  all  see-saw  between  this  and  that — 
Now  high,  now  low — now  master  up,  now  miss — 
And  he  himself  one  vile  antithesis. 
*  *  *  * 

Fop  at  the  toilet,  flatterer  at  the  board, 

Now  trips  a  lady,  and  now  struts  a  lord. 

Eve's  tempter,  thus  the  rabbins  have  expressed — 

A  cherub's  face — a  reptile  all  the  rest. 

Beauty  that  shocks  you,  facts  that  none  can  trust, 

Wit  that  can  creep,  and  pride  that  bites  the  dust." 

"  It  is  impossible,"  Mr.  Croker  thinks,  "  not  to  admire,  how- 
ever we  may  condemn,  the  art  by  which  acknowledged  wit, 
beauty,  and  gentle  manners,  the  queen's  favor,  and  even  a  val- 
etudinary diet,  are  travestied  into  the  most  odious  offenses." 

Pope,  in  two  lines,  pointed  to  the  intimacy  between  Lady 
Mary  and  Lord  Hervey : 

"Once,  and  but  once,  this  heedless  youth  was  hit, 
And  liked  that  dangerous  thing,  a  female  wit." 

Nevertheless,  he  afterward  pretended  that  the  name  Sappho 
was  not  applied  to  Lady  Mary,  but  to  women  in  general ;  and 
acted  with  a  degree  of  mean  prevarication  which  greatly  add- 
ed to  the  amount  of  his  offense. 

The  quarrel  with  Pope  was  not  the  only  attack  which  Lord 
Hervey  had  to  encounter.  Among  the  most  zealous  of  his  foes 
was  Pulteney,  afterward  Lord  Bath,  the  rival  of  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  and  the  confederate  with  Bolingbroke  in  opposing 
that  minister.  The  "  Craftsman,"  a  paper  in  the  Whig  inter- 
est, contained  an  attack  on  Pulteney,  written  with  great  abil- 
ity, by  Hervey.  It  provoked  a  Reply  from  Pulteney.  In  this 
composition  he  spoke  of  Hervey  as  "  a  thing  below  contempt," 
and  ridiculed  his  personal  appearance  in  the  grossest  terms. 
A  duel  was  the  result,  the  parties  meeting  behind  Arlington 
House,  in  Piccadilly,  where  Mr.  Pulteney  had  the  satisfaction 
of  almost  running  Lord  Hervey  through  with  his  sword.  Luck- 
ily the  poor  man  slipped  down,  so  the  blow  was  evaded,  and 


192          "THE  DEATH  OF  LORD  HERVEY:  A  DKAHA." 

the  seconds  interfered :  Mr.  Pulteney  then  embraced  Lord  Her- 
vey, and  expressing  his  regret  for  their  quarrel,  declared  that 
he  would  never  again,  either  in  speech  or  writing,  attack  his 
lordship.  Lord  Hervey  only  bowed,  in  silence  ;  and  thus  they 
parted. ' 

The  queen  having  observed  what  an  alteration  in  the  palace 
Lord  Hervey's  death  would  cause,  he  said  he  could  guess  how 
it  would  be,  and  he  produced  "  The  Death  of  Lord  Hervey ; 
or,  a  Morning  at  Court ;  a  Drama :"  the  idea  being  taken,  it  is 
thought,  from  Swift's  verses  on  his  own  death,  of  which  Her- 
vey might  have  seen  a  surreptitious  copy.  The  following  scene 
will  give  some  idea  of  the  plot  and  structure  of  this  amusing 
little  piece.  The  part  allotted  to  the  Princess  Caroline  is  in 
unison  with  the  idea  prevalent  of  her  attachment  to  Lord  Her? 
vey: 

ACT  I. 
SCENE  :   The  Queen's  Gallery.      The  time,  nine  in  the  morning. 

Enter  the  QUEEN,  PRINCESS  EMILY,  PRINCESS  CAROLINE,  followed  by  LORD 
LIFFORD,  and  MRS.  PURCEL. 

Queen.  Mon  Dieu,  quelle  chaleur !  en  verite  on  etouffe.  Pray  open  a  lit- 
tle those  windows. 

Lord  Lifford.  Hasa  your  Majesty  heara  de  news  ? 

Queen.  What  news,  my  dear  Lord  ? 

Lord  Lifford.  Dat  my  Lord  Hervey,  as  he  was  coming  last  night  to  tone, 
was  rob  and  murdered  by  highwaymen  and  tron  in  a  ditch. 

Princess  Caroline.  Eh !  grand  Dieu ! 

Queen  [striking  her  hand  upon  her  knee~\.  Comment  est-il  veritablement 
mort  ?  Purcel,  my  angel,  shall  I  not  have  a  little  breakfast  ? 

Mrs.  Purcel.  What  would  your  Majesty  please  to  have  ? 

Queen.  A  little  chocolate,  my  soul,  if  you  give  me  leave,  and  a  little  sour 
cream,  and  some  fruit.  [Exit  MRS.  PURCEL. 

Queen  [to  Lord  Lifford].  Eh  bien !  my  Lord  Lifford,  dites-nous  un  peu 
comment  cela  est  arrive.  I  can  not  imagine  what  he  had  to  do  to  be  put- 
ting his  nose  there.  Seulement  pour  un  sot  voyage  avec  ce  petit  mousse,  eh 
bien? 

Lord  Lifford.  Madame,  on  S9ait  quelque  chose  de  celai  de  Mon.  Maran, 
qui  d'abord  qu'il  a  vu  les  voleurs  s'est  enfin  et  venu  a  grand  galoppe  a  Lon- 
dres,  and  after  dat  a  wagoner  take  up  the  body  and  put  it  in  his  cart. 

Queen  [to  PRINCESS  EMILY].  Are  you  not  ashamed,  Amalie,  to  laugh? 

Princess  Emily.  I  only  laughed  at  the  cart,  mamma. 

Queen.  Oh  !  that  is  a  very  fade  plaisanterie. 

Princess  Emily.  But  if  I  may  say  it,  mamma,  I  am  not  very  sorry. 

Queen.  Oh !  fie  done !  Eh  bien !  my  Lord  Lifford !  My  God !  where  is 
this  chocolate,  Purcel  ? 

As  Mr.  Croker  remarks,  Queen  Caroline's  breakfast-table, 
and  her  parentheses,  reminds  one  of  the  card-table  conversa- 
tion of  Swift : 

"The  Dean's  dead:  (pray  what  are  trumps?) 
Then  Lord  have  mercy  on  his  soul ! 
(Ladies,  I'll  venture  for  the  vole.) 


QUEEN  CAROLINE'S  LAST  DKAWING-EOOM.  193 

Six  Deans,  they  say,  must  bear  the  pall ; 
(I  wish  I  knew  what  king  to  call.) 

Fragile  as  was  Lord  Hervey's  constitution,  it  was  his  lot  to 
witness  the  death-bed  of  the  queen,  for  whose  amusement  he 
had  penned  the  jeu  d'esprit  just  quoted,  in  which  there  was, 
perhaps,  as  much  truth  as  wit. 

The  wretched  Queen  Caroline  had,  during  fourteen  years, 
concealed  from  every  one,  except  Lady  Sundon,  an  incurable 
disorder,  that  of  hernia.  In  November  (1737)  she  was  attack- 
ed with  what  we  should  now  call  English  cholera.  Dr.  Tes- 
sier,  her  house-physician,  was  called  in,  and  gave  her  Daffey's 
elixir,  which  was  not  likely  to  afford  any  relief  to  the  deep- 
seated  cause  of  her  sufferings.  She  held  a  drawing-room  that 
night  for  the  last  time,  and  played  at  cards,  even  cheerfully. 
At  length  she  whispered  to  Lord  Hervey,  "  I  am  not  able  to 
entertain  people."  "  For  heaven's  sake,  madam,"  was  the  re- 
ply, "  go  to  your  room :  would  to  heaven  the  king  would  leave 
off  talking  of  the  Dragon  of  Wantley,  and  release  you !"  The 
Dragon  of  Wantley  was  a  burlesque  on  the  Italian  opera,  by 
Henry  Carey,  and  was  the  theme  of  the  fashionable  world. 

The  next  day  the  queen  was  in  fearful  agony,  very  hot,  and 
willing  to  take  any  thing  proposed.  Still  she  did  not,  even  to 
Lord  Hervey,  avow  the  real  cause  of  her  illness.  None  of  the 
most  learned  court  physicians,  neither  Mead  nor  Wilmot,  were 
called  in.  Lord  Hervey  sat  by  the  queen's  bedside,  and  tried 
to  soothe  her,  while  the  Princess  Caroline  joined  in  begging 
him  to  give  her  mother  something  to  relieve  her  agony.  At 
length,  in  utter  ignorance  of  the  case,  it  was  proposed  to  give 
her  some  snakeroot,  a  stimulant,  and,  at  the  same  time,  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh's  cordial ;  so  singular  was  it  thus  to  find  that 
great  mind  still  influencing  a  court.  It  wras  that  very  medi- 
cine which  was  administered  by  Queen  Anne  of  Denmark, 
however,  to  Prince  Henry ;  that  medicine  which  Raleigh  said, 
"  would  cure  him,  or  any  other,  of  a  disease,  except  in  case  of 
poison." 

However,  Ranby,  house-surgeon  to  the  king,  and  a  favorite 
of  Lord  Hervey's,  assuring  him  that  a  cordial  with  this  name 
or  that  name  was  mere  quackery,  some  usquebaugh  was  given 
instead,  but  was  rejected  by  the  queen  soon  afterward.  At 
last  Raleigh's  cordial  was  administered,  but  also  rejected  about 
an  hour  afterward.  Her  fever,  after  taking  Raleigh's  cordial, 
was  so  much  increased,  that  she  was  ordered  instantly  to  be 
bled. 

Then,  even,  the  queen  never  disclosed  the  fact  that  could 
alone  dictate  the  course  to  be  pursued.  George  II.,  with  more 
feeling  than  judgment,  slept  on  the  outside  of  the  queen's  bed 


194  A  PAINFUL   SCENE. 

all  that  night ;  so  that  the  unhappy  invalid  could  get  no  rest, 
nor  change  her  position,  not  daring  to  irritate  the  king's  tem- 
per. 

The  next  day  the  queen  said  touchingly  to  her  gentle,  affec- 
tionate daughter,  herself  in  declining  health,  "  Poor  Caroline ! 
you  are  very  ill,  too ;  we  shall  soon  meet  again  in  another 


Meantime,  though  the  queen  declared  to  every  one  that  she 
was  sure  nothing  could  save  her,  it  was  resolved  to  hold  a  levee. 
The  foreign  ministers  were  to  come  to  court,  and  the  king,  in 
the  midst  of  his  real  grief,  did  not  forget  to  send  word  to  his 
pages  to  be  sure  to  have  his  last  new  ruffles  sewed  on  the  shirt 
he  was  to  put  on  that  day ;  a  trifle  which  often,  as  Lord  Her- 
vey remarks,  shows  more  of  the  real  character  than  events  of 
importance,  from  which  one  frequently  knows  no  more  of  a 
person's  state  of  mind  than  one  does  of  his  natural  gait  from 
his  dancing. 

Lady  Sundon  was,  meantime,  ill  at  Bath,  so  that  the  queen's 
secret  rested  alone  in  her  own  heart.  "I  have  an  ill,"  she 
said,  one  evening,  to  her  daughter  Caroline,  "that  nobody 
knows  of."  Still,  neither  the  princess  nor  Lord  Hervey  could 
guess  at  the  full  meaning  of  that  sad  assertion. 

The  famous  Sir  Hans  Sloane  was  then  called  in ;  but  no 
remedy  except  large  and  repeated  bleedings  was  suggested, 
and  blisters  were  put  on  her  legs.  There  seems  to  have  been 
no  means  left  untried  by  the  faculty  to  hasten  the  catastrophe 
— thus  working  in  the  dark. 

The  king  now  sat  up  with  her  whom  he  had  so  cruelly 
wounded  in  every  nice  feeling.  On  being  asked,  by  Lord  Her- 
vey, what  was  to  be  done  in  case  the  Prince  of  Wales  should 
come  to  inquire  after  the  queen  ?  he  answered  in  the  following 
terms,  worthy  of  his  ancestry — worthy  of  himself.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  say  which  was  the  most  painful  scene,  that  in  the  cham- 
ber where  the  queen  lay  in  agony,  or  without,  where  the  curse 
of  family  dissensions  came  like  a  ghoul  to  hover  near  the  bed 
of  death,  and  to  gloat  over  the  royal  corpse.  This  was  the 
royal  dictum:  "If  the  puppy  should,  in  one  of  his  impertinent 
airs  of  duty  and  affection,  dare  to  come  to  St.  James's,  I  order 
you  to  go  to  the  scoundrel,  and  tell  him  I  wonder  at  his  impu- 
dence for  daring  to  come  here ;  that  he  has  my  orders  already, 
and  knows  my  pleasure,  and  bid  him  go  about  his  business ; 
for  his  poor  mother  is  not  in  a  condition  to  see  him  act  his 
false,  whining,  cringing  tricks  now,  nor  am  I  in  a  humor  to 
bear  with  his  impertinence ;  and  bid  him  trouble  me  with  no 
more  messages,  but  get  out  of  my  house." 

In  the  evening,  while  Lord  Hervey  sat  at  tea  in  the  queen's 


THE  TRUTH   DISCOVERED.  195 

outer  apartment  with  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  a  page  came 
to  the  duke  to  speak  to  the  prince  in  the  passage.  It  was  to 
prefer  a  request  to  see  his  mother.  This  message  was  con- 
veyed by  Lord  Hervey  to  the  king,  whose  reply  was  uttered 
in  the  most  vehement  rage  possible.  "  This,"  said  he,  "  is  like 
one  of  his  scoundrel  tricks ;  it  is  just  of  a  piece  with  his  kneel- 
ing down  in  the  dirt  before  the  mob  to  kiss  her  hand  at  the 
coach  door  when  she  came  home  from  Hampton  Court  to  see 
the  princess,  though  he  had  not  spoken  one  word  to  her  during 
her  whole  visit.  I  always  hated  the  rascal,  but  now  I  hate 
him  worse  than  ever.  He  wants  to  come  and  insult  his  poor 
dying  mother ;  but  she  shall  not  see  him ;  you  have  heard  her, 
and  all  my  daughters  have  heard  her,  very  often  this  year  at 
Hampton  Court  desire  me  if  she  should  be  ill,  and  out  of  her 
senses,  that  I  would  never  let  him  come  near  her ;  and  while 
she  had  her  senses  she  was  sure  she  should  never  desire  it. 
ISTo,  no !  he  shall  not  come  and  act  any  of  his  silly  plays  here." 

In  the  afternoon  the  queen  said  to  the  king,  she  wondered 
the  Griff,  a  nickname  she  gave  to  the  prince,  had  not  sent  to 
inquire  after  her  yet ;  it  would  be  so  like  one  of  his  paroitres. 
"  Sooner  or  later,"  she  added,  "  I  am  sure  we  shall  be  plagued 
with  some  message  of  that  sort,  because  he  will  think  it  will 
have  a  good  air  in  the  world  to  ask  to  see  me ;  and,  perhaps, 
hopes  I  shall  be  fool  enough  to  let  him  come,  and  give  him  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  the  last  breath  go  out  of  my  body,  by  which 
means  he  would  have  the  joy  of  knowing  I  was  dead  five  min- 
utes sooner  than  he  could  know  it  in  Pall  Mall." 

She  afterward  declared  that  nothing  would  induce  her  to  see 
him  except  the  king's  absolute  commands.  "  Therefore,  if  I 
grow  worse,"  she  said,  "  and  should  I  be  weak  enough  to  talk 
of  seeing  him,  I  beg  you,  sir,  to  conclude  that  I  doat — or  rave." 

The  king,  who  had  long  since  guessed  at  the  queen's  dis- 
ease, urged  her  now  to  permit  him  to  name  it  to  her  physi- 
cians. She  begged  him  not  to  do  so ;  and  for  the  first  time, 
and  the  last,  the  unhappy  woman  spoke  peevishly  and  warm- 
ly. Then  Ranby,  the  house-surgeon,  who  had  by  this  time 
discovered  the  truth,  said,  "There  is  no  more  time  to  be  lost; 
your  majesty  has  concealed  the  truth  too  long;  I  beg  another 
surgeon  may  be  called  in  immediately." 

The  queen,  who  had,  in  her  passion,  started  up  in  her  bed, 
lay  down  again,  turned  her  head  on  the  other  side,  and,  as  the 
king  told  Lord  Hervey,  "  shed  the  only  tear  he  ever  saw  her 
shed  while  she  was  ill." 

At  length,  too  late,  other  and  more  sensible  means  were  re- 
sorted to :  but  the  queen's  strength  was  failing  fast.  It  must 
have  been  a  strange  scene  in  that  chamber  of  death.  Much  as 


196  THE  QUEEN'S  DYING  BEQUESTS. 

the  king  really  grieved  for  the  queen's  state,  he  was  still  suf- 
ficiently collected  to  grieve  also  lest  Richmond  Lodge,  which 
was  settled  on  the  queen,  should  go  to  the  hated  Griff;*  and 
he  actually  sent  Lord  Hervey  to  the  lord  chancellor  to  inquire 
about  that  point.  It  was  decided  that  the  queen  could  make 
a  will,  so  the  king  informed  her  of  his  inquiries,  in  order  to  set 
her  mind  at  ease,  and  to  assure  her  it  was  impossible  that  the 
prince  could  in  any  way  benefit  pecuniarily  from  her  death. 
The  Princess  Emily  now  sat  up  with  her  mother.  The  king 
went  to  bed.  The  Princess  Caroline  slept  on  a  couch  in  the 
antechamber,  and  Lord  Hervey  lay  on  a  mattress  on  the  floor 
at  the  foot  of  the  Princess  Caroline's  couch. 

On  the  following  day  (four  after  the  first  attack)  mortifica- 
tion came  on,  and  the  weeping  Princess  Caroline  and  Lord 
Hervey  were  informed  that  the  queen  could  not  hold  out 
many  hours.  Lord  Hervey  was  ordered  to  withdraw.  The 
king,  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  and  the  queen's  four  daugh- 
ters alone  remained,  the  queen  begging  them  not  to  leave  her 
until  she  expired ;  yet  her  life  was  prolonged  many  days. 

When  alone  with  her  family,  she  took  from  her  finger  a 
ruby  ring,  which  had  been  placed  on  it  at  the  time  of  the  cor- 
onation, and  gave  it  to  the  king.  "  This  is  the  last  thing,"  she 
said,  "  I  have  to  give  you ;  naked  I  came  to  you,  and  naked 
I  go  from  you ;  I  had  every  thing  I  ever  possessed  from  you, 
and  to  you  whatever  I  have  I  return."  She  then  asked  for 
her  keys,  and  gave  them  to  the  king.  To  the  Princess  Caro- 
line she  intrusted  the  care  of  her  younger  sisters  ;  to  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland,  that  of  keeping  up  the  credit  of  the  family. 
"Attempt  nothing  against  your  brother,  and  endeavor  to  mor- 
tify him  by  showing  superior  merit,"  she  said  to  him.  She  ad- 
vised the  king  to  marry  again ;  he  heard  her  in  sobs,  and  with 
much  difficulty  got  out  this  sentence  :  "  Non,  j"1  aural  des  mai- 
•tresses"  To  which  the  queen  made  no  other  reply  than  "Ah, 
mon  Dieu!  cela  rfempeche pas"  "I  know,"  says  Lord  Her- 
vey, in  his  Memoirs,  "  that  this  episode  will  hardly  be  credit- 
ed, but  it  is  literally  true." 

She  then  fancied  she  could  sleep.  The  king  kissed  her,  and 
wept  over  her ;  yet  when  she  asked  for  her  watch,  which  hung 
near  the  chimney,  that  she  might  give  him  the  seal  to  take  care 
of,  his  brutal  temper  broke  forth.  In  the  midst  of  his  tears  he 
called  out,  in  a  loud  voice,  "  Let  it  alone !  mon  Dieu  1  the  queen 
has  such  strange  fancies ;  who  should  meddle  with  your  seal  ? 
It  is  as  safe  there  as  in  my  pocket." 

The  queen  then  thought  she  could  sleep,  and,  in  fact,  sank 
to  rest.  She  felt  refreshed  on  awakening  and  said,  "  I  wish  it 
*  Prince  Frederick. 


ARCHBISHOP   POTTER   IS   SENT   FOB.  197 

was  over ;  it  is  only  a  reprieve  to  make  me  suffer  a  little  lon- 
ger ;  I  can  not  recover,  but  my  nasty  heart  will  not  break  yet." 
She  had  an  impression  that  she  should  die  on  a  Wednesday: 
she  had,  she  said,  been  born  on  a  Wednesday,  married  on  a 
Wednesday,  crowned  on  a  Wednesday,  her  first  child  was  born 
on  a  Wednesday,  and  she  had  heard  of  the  late  king's  death 
on  a  Wednesday. 

On  the  ensuing  day  she  saw  Sir  Robert  Walpole.  "  My 
good  Sir  Robert,"  she  thus  addressed  him,  "  you  see  me  in  a 
very  indifferent  situation.  I  have  nothing  to  say  to  you  but 
to  recommend  the  king,  my  children,  and  the  kingdom  to  your 
care." 

Lord  Hervey,  when  the  minister  retired,  asked  him  what  he 
thought  of  the  queen's  state. 

"  My  lord,"  was  the  reply,  "  she  is  as  much  dead  as  if  she 
was  in  her  coffin ;  if  ever  I  heard  a  corpse  speak,  it  was  just 
now  in  that  room !" 

It  was  a  sad,  an  awful  death-bed.  The  Prince  of  Wales 
having  sent  to  inquire  after  the  health  of  his  dying  mother, 
the  queen  became  uneasy  lest  he  should  hear  the  true  state 
of  her  case,  asking  "if  no  one  would  send  those  ravens," 
meaning  the  prince's  attendants,  "  out  of  the  house.  They 
were  only,"  she  said,  "  watching  her  death,  and  would  gladly 
tear  her  to  pieces  while  she  was  alive."  While  thus  she 
spoke  of  her  son's  courtiers,  that  son  was  sitting  up  all  night 
in  his  house  in  Pall  Mall,  and  saying,  when  any  messenger 
came  in  from  St.  James's,  "Well,  sure,  we  shall  soon  have 
good  news,  she  can  not  hold  out  much  longer."  And  the 
princesses  were  writing  letters  to  prevent  the  princess  royal 
from  coming  to  England,  where  she  was  certain  to  meet  with 
brutal  unkindness  from  her  father,  who  could  not  endure  to 
be  put  to  any  expense.  Orders  were,  indeed,  sent  to  stop 
her  if  she  set  out.  She  came,  however,  on  pretense  of  taking 
the  Bath  waters ;  but  George  II.,  furious  at  her  disobedience, 
obliged  her  to  go  direct  to  and  from  Bath  without  stopping, 
and  never  forgave  her. 

Notwithstanding  her  predictions,  the  queen  survived  the 
fatal  Wednesday.  Until  this  time  no  prelate  had  been  called 
in  to  pray  by  her  majesty,  nor  to  administer  the  Holy  Com- 
munion ;  and  as  people  about  the  court  began  to  be  scandal- 
ized by  this  omission,  Sir  Robert  Walpole  advised  that  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  should  be  sent  for :  his  opinion  was 
couched  in  the  following  terms,  characteristic  at  once  of  the 
man,  the  times,  and  the  court : 

"  Pray,  madam,"  he  said  to  the  Princess  Emily,  "  let  this 
farce  be  played ;  the  archbishop  will  act  it  very  well.  You 


198  THE   DUTY   OF  KECONCHJATIOST. 

may  bid  him  be  as  short  as  you  will :  it  will  do  the  queen  no 
hurt,  no  more  than  any  good ;  and  it  will  satisfy  all  the  wise 
and  good  fools  who  wUl  call  us  atheists  if  we  don't  pretend  to 
be  as  great  fools  as  they  are." 

Unhappily,  Lord  Hervey,  who  relates  this  anecdote,  was 
himself  an  unbeliever ;  yet  the  scoffing  tone  adopted  by  Sir 
Robert  seems  to  have  shocked  even  him. 

In  consequence  of  this  advice,  Archbishop  Potter  prayed 
by  the  queen  morning  and  evening,  the  king  always  quitting 
the  room  when  his  grace  entered  it.  Her  children,  however, 
knelt  by  her  bedside.  Still  the  whisperers  who  censured  were 
unsatisfied — the  concession  was  thrown  away.  Why  did  not 
the  queen  receive  the  communion  ?  Was  it,  as  the  world  be- 
lieved, either  "that  she  had  reasoned  herself  into  a  very  low 
and  cold  assent  to  Christianity?"  or  "that  she  was  hetero- 
dox ;"  or  "  that  the  archbishop  refused  to  administer  the  sac- 
rament until  she  should  be  reconciled  to  her  son?"  Even 
Lord  Hervey,  who  rarely  left  the  antechamber,  has  only  by 
his  silence  proved  that  she  did  not  take  the  communion.  That 
antechamber  was  crowded  with  persons  who,  as  the  prelate 
left  the  chamber  of  death,  crowded  around,  eagerly  asking, 
"  Has  the  queen  received  ?"  "  Her  Majesty,"  was  the  evasive 
reply,  "is  in  a  heavenly  disposition :"  the  public  were  thus  de- 
ceived. Among  those  who  were  near  the  queen  at  this  sol- 
emn hour  was  Dr.  Butler,  author  of  the  "  Analogy."  He  had 
been  made  clerk  of  the  closet,  and  became,  after  the  queen's 
death,  Bishop  of  Bristol.  He  was  in  a  remote  living  in  Dur- 
ham, when  the  queen,  remembering  that  it  was  long  since  she 
had  heard  of  him,  asked  the  Archbishop  of  York  "  whether 
Dr.  Butler  was  dead  ?"  "  N"o,  madam,"  replied  that  prelate 
(Dr.  Blackburn),  "but  he  is  buried ;"  upon  which  she  had  sent 
for  him  to  court.  Yet  he  was  not  courageous  enough,  it  seems, 
to  speak  to  her  of  her  son  and  of  the  duty  of  reconciliation ; 
whether  she  ever  sent  the  prince  any  message  or  not  is  uncer- 
tain ;  Lord  Hervey  is  silent  on  that  point,  so  that  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  Lord  Chesterfield's  line, 

"And,  unforgiving,  ttnforgiven,  dies!" 

had  but  too  sure  a  foundation  in  fact ;  so  that  Pope's  sarcastic 
verses — 

"  Hang  the  sad  verse  on  Carolina's  urn, 

And  hail  her  passage  to  the  realms  of  rest ; 

All  parts  performed,  and  all  her  children  blest," 

may  have  been  but  too  just,  though  cruelly  bitter.  The  queen 
lingered  till  the  20th  of  November.  During  that  interval  of 
agony  her  consort  was  perpetually  boasting  to  every  one  of 


THE  DEATH  OF  QUEEN  CAROLINE.  199 

her  virtues,  her  sense,  her  patience,  her  softness,  her  delicacy ; 
and  ending  with  the  praise,  "  Comme  elle  soutenoit  sa  dignite 
avec  grace,  avec  politesse,  avec  douceur!"  Nevertheless  he 
scarcely  ever  went  into  her  room.  Lord  Hervey  states  "  that 
he  did,  even  in  this  moving  situation,  snub  her  for  something 
or  other  she  did  or  said."  One  morning,  as  she  lay  with  her 
eyes  fixed  on  a  point  in  the  air,  as  people  sometimes  do  when 
they  want  to  keep  their  thoughts  from  wandering,  the  king 
coarsely  told  her  "  she  looked  like  a  calf  which  had  just  had  its 
throat  cut."  He  expected  her  to  die  in  state.  Then,  with  all 
his  bursts  of  tenderness  he  always  mingled  his  own  praises, 
hinting  that  though  she  was  a  good  wife,  he  knew  he  had  de- 
served a  good  one,  and  remarking,  when  he  had  extolled  her 
understanding,  that  he  did  not  "  think  it  the  worse  for  her  hav- 
ing kept  him  company  so  many  years."  To  all  this  Lord  Her- 
vey listened  with,  doubtless,  well-concealed  disgust ;  for  cabals 
were  even  then  forming  for  the  future  influence  that  might  or 
might  not  be  obtained. 

The  queen's  life,  meantime,  was  softly  ebbing  away  in  this 
atmosphere  of  selfishness,  brutality,  and  unbelief.  One  even- 
ing she  asked  Dr.  Tessier  impatiently  how  long  her  state 
might  continue  ? 

"  Your  Majesty,"  was  the  reply,  "  will  soon  be  released." 

"  So  much  the  better,"  the  queen  calmly  answered. 

At  ten  o'clock  that  night,  while  the  king  lay  at  the  foot  of 
her  bed,  on  the  floor,  and  the  Princess  Emily  on  a  couch-bed 
in  the  room,  the  fearful  death-rattle  in  the  throat  was  heard. 
Mrs.  Purcel,  her  chief  and  old  attendant,  gave  the  alarm  :  the 
Princess  Caroline  and  Lord  Hervey  were  sent  for ;  but  the 
princess  was  too  late,  her  mother  had  expired  before  she  ar- 
rived. All  the  dying  queen  said  was,  "I  have  now  got  an 
asthma ;  open  the  window :"  then  she  added,  "  Pray!"  That 
was  her  last  word.  As  the  Princess  Emily  began  to  read 
some  prayers,  the  sufferer  breathed  her  last  sigh.  The  Prin- 
cess Caroline  held  a  looking-glass  to  her  lips,  and  finding  there 
was  no  damp  on  it,  said,  "  "Us  over !"  Yet  she  shed  not  one 
tear  upon  the  arrival  of  that  event,  the  prospect  of  which  had 
cost  her  so  many  heart-rending  SODS. 

The  king  kissed  the  lifeless  face  and  hands  of  his  often-in- 
jured wife,  and  then  retired  to  his  own  apartment,  ordering 
that  a  page  should  sit  up  with  him  for  that  and  several  other 
nights,  for  his  majesty  was  afraid  of  apparitions,  and  feared 
to  be  left  alone.  He  caused  himself,  however,  to  be  buried 
by  the  side  of  his  queen,  hi  Henry  VII.'s  chapel,  and  ordered 
that  one  side  of  his  coffin  and  of  hers  should  be  withdrawn ; 
and  in  that  state  the  two  coffins  were  discovered  not  many 
years  ago. 


200  A    CHANGE   IN    HERVEY*S   LIFE. 

With  the  death  of  Queen  Caroline,  Lord  Hervey's  life,  as  to 
court,  was  changed.  He  was  afterward  made  lord  privy  seal, 
and  had  consequently  to  enter  the  political  world,  with  the 
disadvantage  of  knowing  that  much  was  expected  from  a  man 
of  so  high  a  reputation  for  wit  and  learning.  He  was  violently 
opposed  by  Pelham,  Duke  of  Newcastle,  who  had  been  ad- 
verse to  his  entering  the  ministry ;  and  since,  with  Walpole's 
favor,  it  was  impossible  to  injure  him  by  fair  means,  it  was 
resolved  to  oppose  Lord  Hervey  by  foul  ones.  One  evening, 
when  he  was  to  speak,  a  party  of  fashionable  Amazons,  with 
two  duchesses— her  grace  of  Queensberry  and  her  grace  of 
Ancaster — at  their  head,  stormed  the  House  of  Lords  and  dis- 
turbed the  debate  with  noisy  laughter  and  sneers.  Poor  Lord 
Hervey  was  completely  daunted,  and  spoke  miserably.  After 
Sir  Robert  Walpole's  fall  Lord  Hervey  retired.  The  follow, 
ing  letter  from  him  to  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu  fully  de- 
scribes his  position  and  circumstances : 

"  I  must  now,"  he  writes  to  her,  "  since  you  take  so  friendly 
a  part  in  what  concerns  me,  give  you  a  short  account  of  my 
natural  and  political  health ;  and  when  I  say  I  am  still  alive, 
and  still  privy  seal,  it  is  all  I  can  say  for  the  pleasure  of  one 
or  the  honor  of  the  other ;  for  since  Lord  Orford's  retiring, 
as  I  am  too  proud  to  offer  my  service  and  friendship  where  I 
am  not  sure  they  will  be  accepted  of,  and  too  inconsiderable 
to  have  those  advances  made  to  me  (though  I  never  forgot  or 
failed  to  return  any  obligation  I  ever  received),  so  I  remained 
as  illustrious  a  nothing  in  this  office  as  ever  filled  it  since  it  was 
erected.  There  is  one  benefit,  however,  I  enjoy  from  this  loss 
of  my  court  interest,  which  is,  that  all  those  flies  which  were 
buzzing  about  me  in  the  summer  sunshine  and  full  ripeness  of 
that  interest,  have  all  deserted  its  autumnal  decay,  and  from 
thinking  my  natural  death  not  far  off,  and  my  political  demise 
already  over,  have  all  forgot  the  death-bed  of  the  one  and  the 
coffin  of  the  other." 

Again  he  wrote  to  her  a  characteristic  letter : 

"  I  have  been  confined  these  three  weeks  by  a  fever,  which 
is  a  sort  of  annual  tax  my  detestable  constitution  pays  to  our 
detestable  climate  at  the  return  of  every  spring;  it  is  now 
much  abated,  though  not  quite  gone  off." 

He  was  long  a  helpless  invalid ;  and  on  the  8th  of  Au- 
gust, 1743,  his  short,  unprofitable,  brilliant,  unhappy  life  was 
closed.  He  died  at  Ickworth,  attended  and  deplored  by  his 
wife,  who  had  ever  held  a  secondary  part  in  the  heart  of  the 
great  wit  and  beau  of  the  court  of  George  II.  After  his  death 
his  son  George  returned  to  Lady  Mary  all  the  letters  she  had 
written  to  his  father :  the  packet  was  sealed ;  an  assurance 


201 

was  at  the  same  time  given  that  they  had  not  been  read.  In 
acknowledging  this  act  of  attention,  Lady  Mary  wrote  that 
"  she  could  almost  regret  that  he  had  not  glanced  his  eye  over 
a  correspondence  which  might  have  shown  him  what  so  young 
a  man  might  perhaps  be  inclined  to  doubt — the  possibility  of 
a  long  and  steady  friendship  subsisting  between  two  persons 
of  different  sexes  without  the  least  mixture  of  love." 

Nevertheless,  some  expressions  of  Lord  Hervey  seem  to 
have  bordered  on  the  tender  style,  when  Vriting  to  Lady  Mary 
in  such  terms  as  these.  She  had  complained  that  she  was  too 
old  to  inspire  a  passion  (a  sort  of  challenge  for  a  compliment), 
on  which  he  wrote :  "  I  should  think  any  body  a  great  fool 
that  said  he  liked  spring  better  than  summer,  merely  because 
it  is  further  from  autumn,  or  that  they  loved  green  fruit  bet- 
ter than  ripe  only  because  it  w^as  further  from  being  rotten. 
I  ever  did,  and  believe  ever  shall,  like  woman  best — 

1  Just  in  the  noon  of  life — those  golden  days, 
"When  the  mind  ripens  ere  the  form  decays. '  " 

Certainly  this  looks  very  unlike  a  pure  Platonic,  and  it  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at  that  Lady  Hervey  refused  to  call  on 
Lady  Mary,  wThen,  long  after  Lord  Hervey's  death,  that  fasci- 
nating woman  returned  to  England,  A  wit,  a  courtier  at  the 
very  fount  of  all  politeness,  Lord  Hervey  wanted  the  genuine 
source  of  all  social  qualities — Christianity.  That  moral  re- 
frigerator which  checks  the  kindly  current  of  neighborly  kind- 
ness, and  which  prevents  all  genial  feelings  from  expanding, 
produced  its  usual  effect — misanthrophy.  Lord  Hervey's  lines, 
in  his  "  Satire  after  the  manner  of  Persius,"  describes  too  well 
his  own  mental  canker : 

"  Mankind  I  know,  their  motives  and  their  art, 
Their  vice  their  own,  their  virtue  best  apart. 
Till  played  so  oft,  that  all  the  cheat  can  tell', 
And  dangerous  only  when  'tis  acted  well." 

Lord  Hervey  left  in  the  possession  of  his  family  a  manu- 
script work,  consisting  of  memoirs  of  his  own  time,  written  in 
his  own  autograph,  which  was  clean  and  legible.  This  work, 
which  has  furnished  many  of  the  anecdotes  connected  with 
his  court  life  in  the  foregoing  pages,  was  long  guarded  from 
the  eye  of  any  but  the  Hervey  family,  owing  to  an  injunction 
given  in  his  will  by  Augustus,  third  Earl  of  Bristol,  Lord 
Hervey's  son,  that  it  should  not  see  the  light  until  after  the 
death  of  His  Majesty  George  III.  It  was  not  therefore  pub- 
lished until  1848,  when  they  were  edited  by  Mr.  Croker. 
They  are  referred  to  both  by  Horace  Walpole,  who  had 
heard  of  them,  if  he  had  not  seen  them,  and  by  Lord  Hailes, 

12 


202  HERVEY'S  MEMOIES  OP  HIS  OWN  TIME. 

as  affording  the  most  intimate  portraiture  of  a  court  that  has 
ever  been  presented  to  the  English  people.  Such  a  delinea- 
tion as  Lord  Hervey  has  left  ought  to  cause  a  sentiment  of 
thankfulness  in  every  British  heart  for  not  being  exposed  to 
such  influences,  to  such  examples  as  he  gives,  in  the  present 
day,  when  goodness,  affection,  purity,  benevolence,  are  the 
household  deities  of  the  court  of  our  beloved,  inestimable 
Queen  Victoria. 


PHILIP  DORMER  STANHOPE,  FOURTH  EARL  OF  CHES- 
TERFIELD, 

THE  subject  of  this  memoir  may  be  thought  by  some  rather 
the  modeler  of  wits  than  the  original  of  that  class  ;  the  great 
critic  and  judge  of  manners  rather  than  the  delight  of  the  din- 
ner-table ;  but  we  are  told  to  the  contrary  by  one  who  loved 
him  not.  Lord  Hervey  says  of  Lord  Chesterfield  that  he  was 
"  allowed  by  every  body  to  have  more  conversable  entertain- 
ing table- wit  than  any  man  of  his  time ;  his  propensity  to  ridi- 
cule, in  which  he  indulged  himself  with  infinite  humor  and  no 
distinction ;  and  his  inexhaustible  spirits,  and  no  discretion ; 
made  him  sought  and  feared— liked  and  not  loved — by  most 
of  his  acquaintance." 

This  formidable  personage  was  born  in  London  on  the  2d 
day  of  September,  1694.  It  was  remarkable  that  the  father  of 
a  man  so  vivacious,  should  have  been  of  a  morose  temper ;  all 
the  wit  and  spirit  of  intrigue  displayed  by  him  remind  us  of 
the  frail  Lady  Chesterfield,  in  the  time  of  Charles  II.* — that 
lady  who  was  looked  on  as  a  martyr  because  her  husband  was 
jealous  of  her ;  "  a  prodigy,"  says  De  Grammont,  "  in  the  city 
of  London,"  where  indulgent  critics  endeavor  to  excuse  his 
lordship  on  account  of  his  bad  education,  and  mothers  vowed 
that  none  of  their  sons  should  ever  set  foot  in  Italy,  lest  they 
should  "  bring  back  with  them  that  infamous  custom  of  laying 
restraint  on  their  wives." 

Even  Horace  Walpole  cites  Chesterfield  as  the  "witty  earl :" 
apropos  to  an  anecdote  which  he  relates  of  an  Italian  lady, 
who  said  that  she  was  only  four-and-twenty ;  "  I  suppose," 
said  Lord  Chesterfield,  "  she  means  four-and-twenty  stone." 

By  his  father  the  future  wit,  historian,  and  orator  was  ut- 
terly neglected;  but  his  grandmother,  the  Marchioness  of 
Halifax,  supplied  to  him  the  place  of  both  parents,  his  mother 
-• — her  daughter,  Lady  Elizabeth  Saville — having  died  in  his 
childhood.  At  the  age  of  eighteen,  Chesterfield,  then  Lord 
Stanhope,  was  entered  at  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge.  It  was 
one  of  the  features  of  his  character  to  fall  at  once  into  the 
tone  of  the  society  into  which  he  happened  to  be  thrown.  One 
can  hardly  imagine  his  being  "  an  absolute  pedant,"  but  such 

*  The  Countess  of  Chesterfield  here  alluded  to  was  the  second  wife  of 
Philip,  second  Earl  of  Chesterfield.  Philip  Dormer,  fourth  Earl,  was  grand- 
son of  the  second  Earl,  by  his  third  wife. 


204  HERVEY'S  DESCRIPTION  OF  CHESTERFIELD. 

was,  actually,  his  own  account  of  himself:  "  When  I  talked 
ray  best,  I  quoted  Horace ;  when  I  aimed  at  being  facetious, 
I  quoted  Martial ;  and  when  I  had  a  mind  to  be  a  fine  gentle- 
man, I  talked  Ovid.  I  was  convinced  that  none  but  the  an- 
cients had  common  sense;  that  the  classics  contained  every 
thing  that  was  either  necessary,  useful,  or  ornamental  to  men ; 
and  I  was  not  even  without  thoughts  of  wearing  the  toga 
virilis  of  the  Romans,  instead  of  the  vulgar  and  illiberal  dress 
of  the  moderns." 

Thus,  again,  when  in  Paris,  he  caught  the  manners,  as  he 
had  acquired  the  language,  of  the  Parisians.  "I  shall  not 
give  you  my  opinion  of  the  French,  because  I  am  very  often 
taken  for  one  of  them,  and  several  have  paid  me  the  highest 
compliment  they  think  it  in  their  power  to  bestow — which  is, 
'Sir,  you  are  just  like  ourselves.'  I  shall  only  tell  you  that 
I  am  insolent ;  I  talk  a  great  deal ;  I  am  very  loud  and  per- 
enptory ;  I  sing  and  dance  as  I  walk  along ;  and,  above  all, 
I  spend  an  immense  sum  in  hair-powder,  feathers,  and  white 
gloves." 

Although  he  entered  Parliament  before  he  had  attained  the 
legal  age,  and  was  expected  to  make  a  great  figure  in  that  as- 
sembly, Lord  Chesterfield  preferred  the  reputation  of  a  wit 
and  a  beau  to  any  other  distinction.  "  Call  it  vanity,  if  you 
will,"  he  wrote  in  after  life  to  his  son,  "  and  possibly  it  was 
so ;  but  my  great  object  was  to  make  every  man  and  every 
woman  love  me.  I  often  succeeded;  but  why?  by  taking 
great  pains." 

According  to  Lord  Hervey's  account  he  often  even  sacri- 
ficed his  interest  to  his  vanity.  The  description  given  of  Lord 
Chesterfield  by  one  as  bitter  as  himself  implies,  indeed,  that 
great  pains  were  requisite  to  counterbalance  the  defects  of  na- 
ture. Wilkes,  one  of  the  ugliest  men  of  his  time,  used  to  say, 
that  with  an  hour's  start  he  would  carry  off  the  affections  of 
any  woman  from  the  handsomest  man  breathing.  Lord  Ches- 
terfield, according  to  Lord  Hervey,  required  to  be  still  longer 
in  advance  of  a  rival. 

"  With  a  person,"  Hervey  writes, "  as  disagreeable  as  it  was 
possible  for  a  human  figure  to  be  without  being  deformed,  he 
affected  following  many  women  of  the  first  beauty  and  the 
most  in  fashion.  He  was  very  short,  disproportioned,  thick, 
and  clumsily  made;  had  a  broad,  rough-featured,  ugly  face, 
with  black  teeth,  and  a  head  big  enough  for  a  Polyphemus. 
One  Ben  Ashurst,  who  said  a  few  good  things,  though  ad- 
mired for  many,  told  Lord  Chesterfield  once,  that  he  was  like 
a  stunted  giant — which  was  a  humorous  idea  and  really  ap- 
posite." 


STUDY   OP    ORATORY. DUTY    OP   AN   EMBASSADOR.        205 

Notwithstanding  that  Chesterfield,  when  young,  injured  both 
soul  and  body  by  pleasure  and  dissipation,  he  always  found 
time  for  serious  study :  when  he  could  not  have  it  otherwise, 
he  took  it  out  of  his  sleep.  How  late  soever  he  went  to  bed, 
he  resolved  always  to  rise  early ;  and  this  resolution  he  ad- 
hered to  so  faithfully,  that  at  the  age  of  fifty-eight  he  could 
declare  that  for  more  than  forty  years  he  had  never  been  in 
bed  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  but  had  generally  been  up 
before  eight.  He  had  the  good  sense,  in  this  respect,  not  to 
exaggerate  even  this  homely  virtue.  He  did  not  rise  with  the 
dawn,  as  many  early  risers  pride  themselves  in  doing,  putting 
all  the  engagements  of  ordinary  life  out  of  their  usual  beat, 
just  as  if  the  clocks  had  been  set  two  hours  forward.  The 
man  who  rises  at  four  in  this  country,  and  goes  to  bed  at  nine, 
is  a  social  and  family  nuisance. 

Strong  good  sense  characterized  Chesterfield's  early  pur- 
suits. Desultory  reading  he  abhorred.  He  looked  on  it  as 
one  of  the  resources  of  age,  but  as  injurious  to  the  young  in 
the  extreme.  "  Throw  away,"  thus  he  writes  to  his  son,  "  none 
of  your  time  upon  those  trivial,  futile  books,  published  by  idle 
necessitous  authors  for  the  amusement  of  idle  and  ignorant 
readers." ' 

Even  in  those  days  such  books  "swarm  and  buzz  about 
one:"  "flap  them  away,"  says  Chesterfield,  "they  have  no 
sting."  The  earl  directed  the  whole  force  of  his  mind  to  ora- 
tory, and  became  the  finest  speaker  of  his  time.  Writing  to 
Sir  Horace  Mann,  about  the  Hanoverian  debate  (in  1743,  Dec. 
15),Walpole  praising  the  speeches  of  Lords  Halifax  and  Sand- 
wich, adds,  "  I  was  there,  and  heard  Lord  Chesterfield  make 
the  finest  oration  I  ever  heard  there."  This  from  a  man  who 
had  listened  to  Pulteney,  to  Chatham,  to  Carteret,  was  a  sin- 
gularly valuable  tribute. 

While  a  student  at  Cambridge,  Chesterfield  was  forming  an 
acquaintance  with  the  Hon.  George  Berkeley,  the  youngest  son 
of  the  second  Earl  of  Berkeley,  and  remarkable  rather  as  being 
the  second  husband  of  Lady  Suffolk,  the  favorite  of  George 
II.,  than  from  any  merits  or  demerits  of  his  own. 

This  early  intimacy  probably  brought  Lord  Chesterfield  into 
the  close  friendship  which  afterward  subsisted  between  him 
and  Lady  Suffolk,  to  whom  many  of  his  letters  are  addressed. 

His  first  public  capacity  was  a  diplomatic  appointment :  he 
afterward  attained  to  the  rank  of  an  embassador,  whose  duty 
it  is,  according  to  a  witticism  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton's,  "  to  lie 
abroad  for  the  good  of  his  country ;"  and  no  man  was  in  this 
respect  more  competent  to  fulfill  these  requirements  than  Ches- 
terfield. Hating  both  wine  and  tobacco,  he  had  smoked  and 


206  GEORGE   II.'s    OPINION   OF   HIS   CHRONICLERS. 

drunk  at  Cambridge, "  to  be  in  the  fashion ;"  he  gamed  at  the 
Hague,  on  the  same  principle ;  and,  unhappily,  gaming  became 
a  habit  and  a  passion.  Yet  never  did  he  indulge  it  when  act- 
ing,  afterward,  in  a  ministerial  capacity.  Neither  when  Lord 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  or  as  Under-secretary  of  State,  did  he 
allow  a  gaming-table  in  his  house.  On  the  very  night  that  he 
resigned  office  he  went  to  White's. 

The  Hague  was  then  a  charming  residence :  among  others 
who,  from  political  motives,  were  living  there,  were  John  Duke 
of  Marlborough  and  Queen  Sarah,  both  of  whom  paid  Chester- 
field marked  attention.  Naturally  industrious,  with  a  ready 
insight  into  character — a  perfect  master  in  that  art  which  bids 
us  keep  one's  thoughts  close,  and  our  countenances  open, 
Chesterfield  was  admirably  fitted  for  diplomacy.  A  master 
of  modern  languages  and  of  history,  he  soon  began  to  like 
business.  When  in  England,  he  had  been  accused  of  having 
"  a  need  of  a  certain  proportion  of  talk  in  a  day :"  "  that,"  he 
wrote  to  Lady  Suffolk,  "  is  now  changed  into  a  need  of  such  a 
proportion  of  writing  in  a  day." 

In  1728  he  was  promoted:  being  sent  as  embassador  to  the 
Hague,  where  he  was  popular,  and  where  he  believed  his  stay 
would  be  beneficial  both  to  soul  and  body,  there  being  "  fewer 
temptations,  and  fewer  opportunities  to  sin,"  as  he  wrote  to 
Lady  Suffolk,  "  than  in  England."  Here  his  days  passed,  he 
asserted,  in  doing  the  king's  business  very  ill — and  his  own 
still  worse :  sitting  down  daily  to  dinner  with  fourteen  or  fif- 
teen people ;  while  at  five  the  pleasures  of  the  evening  began 
with  a  lounge  on  the  Voorhoot,  a  public  walk  planted  by 
Charles  V. :  then,  either  a  very  bad  French  play,  or  a  "  reprise 
quadrille,"  with  three  ladies,  the  youngest  of  them  fifty,  and 
the  chance  of  losing,  perhaps,  three  florins  (besides  one's  time) 
— lasted  till  ten  o'clock ;  at  which  time  "  His  Excellency"  went 
home,  "reflecting  with  satisfaction  on  the  innocent  amuse- 
ments of  a  well-spent  day,  that  left  nothing  behind  them," 
and  retired  to  bed  at  eleven,  "  with  the  testimony  of  a  good 
conscience." 

All,  however,  of  Chesterfield's  time  was  not  passed  in  this 
serene  dissipation.  He  began  to  compose  "  The  History  of 
the  Reign  of  George  II."  at  this  period.  About  only  half  a 
dozen  characters  were  written.  The  intention  was  not  con- 
fined to  Chesterfield :  Carteret  and  Bolingbroke  entertained  a 
similar  design,  which  was  completed  by  neither.  When  the 
subject  was  broached  before  George  II.,  he  thus  expressed 
himself:  and  his  remarks  are  the  more  amusing  as  they  were 
addressed  to  Lord  Hervey,  who  was,  at  that  very  moment, 
making  his  notes  for  that  bitter  chronicle  of  his  majesty's 


LIFE   IN   THE   COUNTRY.  207 

reign,  which  has  been  ushered  into  the  world  by  the  late  Wilson 
Croker — "  They  will  all  three,"  said  King  George  II.,  "  have 
about  as  much  truth  in  them  as  the  Mille  et  line  Nuits.  Not 
but  I  shall  like  to  read  Bolingbroke's,  who  of  all  those  rascals 
and  knaves  that  have  been  lying  against  me  these  ten  years 
has  certainly  the  best  parts,  and  the  most  knowledge.  He  is 
a  scoundrel,  but  he  is  a  scoundrel  of  a  higher  class  than  Ches- 
terfield. Chesterfield  is  a  little,  tea-table  scoundrel,  that  tells 
little  womanish  lies  to  make  quarrels  in  families ;  and  tries  to 
make  women  lose  their  reputations,  and  make  their  husbands 
beat  them,  without  any  object  but  to  give  himself  airs ;  as  if 
any  body  could  believe  a  woman  could  like  a  dwarf  baboon." 

Lord  Hervey  gave  the  preference  to  Bolingbroke :  stating 
as  his  reason,  that  "  though  Lord  Bolingbroke  had  no  idea  of 
wit,  his  satire  was  keener  than  any  one's.  Lord  Chesterfield, 
on  the  other  hand,  would  have  a  great  deal  of  wit  in  them ; 
but,  in  every  page  you  would  see  he  intended  to  be  witty : 
every  paragraph  would  be  an  epigram.  Polish,  he  declared, 
would  be  his  bane ;"  "and  Lord  Hervey  was  perfectly  right. 

In  1732  Lord  Chesterfield  was  obliged  to  retire  from  his 
embassy  on  the  plea  of  ill-health,  but,  probably,  from  some 
political  cause.  He  was  in  the  opposition  against  Sir  Robert 
Walpole  on  the  Excise  Bill ;  and  felt  the  displeasure  of  that 
all-powerful  .minister  by  being  dismissed  from  his  office  of 
High  Steward. 

Being  badly  received  at  court,  he  now  li ved  in  the  country ; 
sometimes  at  Buxton,  where  his  father  drank  the  waters,  where 
he  had  his  recreations,  when  not  persecuted  by  two  young 
brothers,  Sir  William  Stanhope  and  John  Stanhope,  one  of 
whom  performed  "tolerably  ih1  upon  a  broken  hautboy,  and 
the  other  something  worse  upon  a  cracked  flute."  There  he 
won  three  half-crowns  from  the  curate  of  the  place,  and  a 
shilling  from  "  Gaffer  Foxeley"  at  a  cock-match.  Sometimes 
he  sought  relaxation  in  Scarborough,  where  fashionable  beaux 
"  danced  with  the  pretty  ladies  all  night,"  and  hundreds  of 
Yorkshire  country  bumpkins  "  played  the  inferior  parts ;  and, 
as  it  were,  only  tumble,  while  the  others  dance  upon  the  high 
ropes  of  gallantry."  Scarborough  was  full  of  Jacobites :  the 
popular  feeling  was  then  all  rife  against  Sir  Robert  Walpole's 
excise  scheme.  Lord  Chesterfield  thus  wittily  satirized  that 
famous  measure : 

"  The  people  of  this  town  are,  at  present,  in  great  conster- 
nation upon  a  report  they  have  heard  from  London,  which,  if 
true,  they  think  will  ruin  them.  They  are  informed,  that  con- 
sidering the  vast  consumption  of  these  waters,  there  is  a  de- 
sign laid  of  excising  them  next  session  ;  and,  moreover,  that 


208  MELTJSINA,  COUNTESS    OF   WALSINGHAM. 

as  bathing  in  the  sea  is  become  the  general  practice  of  both 
sexes,  and  as  the  kings  of  England  have  always  been  allowed 
to  be  masters  of  the  seas,  every  person  so  bathing  shall  be 
gauged,  and  pay  so  much  per  foot  square  as  their  cubical  bulk 
amounts  to." 

In  1733,  Lord  Chesterfield  married  Melusina,  the  supposed 
niece,  but,  in  fact,  the  daughter  of  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  the 
mistress  of  George  I.  This  lady  was  presumed  to  be  a  great 
heiress,  from  the  dominion  which  her  mother  had  over  the 
king.  Melusina  had  been  created  (for  life)  Baroness  of  Aid- 
borough,  county  Suffolk,  and  Countess  of  Walsingham.  county 
Norfolk,  nine  years  previous  to  her  marriage. 

Her  father  being  George  I.,  as  Horace  Walpole  terms  him, 
"rather  a  good  sort  of  man  than  a  shining  king,"  and  her 
mother  "being  no  genius,"  there  was  probably  no  great  at- 
traction about  Lady  Walsingham  except  her  expected  dowry. 

During  her  girlhood  Melusina  resided  in  the  apartments  at 
St.  James's — opening  into  the  garden ;  and  here  Horace  Wal- 
pole describes  his  seeing  George  I.,  in  the  rooms  appropriated 
to  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  next  to  those  of  Melusina  Schulem- 
berg,  or,  as  she  was  then  called,  the  Countess  of  Walsingham. 
The  Duchess  of  Kendal  was  then  very  "  lean  and  ill-favored." 
"Just  before  her,"  says  Horace,  "stood  a  tall,  elderly  man, 
rather  pale,  of  an  aspect  rather  good-natured  than  august :  in 
a  dark  tie-wig,  a  plain  coat,  waistcoat,  and  breeches  of  snuff 
colored  cloth,  with  stockings  of  the  same  color,  and  a  blue 
ribbon  over  all.  That  was  George  I." 

The  Duchess  of  Kendal  had  been  maid  of  honor  to  the 
Electress  Sophia,  the  mother  of  George  I.,  and  the  daughter 
of  Elizabeth  of  Bohemia.  The  duchess  was  always  frightful ; 
so  much  so  that  one  night  the  electress,  who  had  acquired  a 
little  English,  said  to  Mrs.  Howard,  afterward  Lady  Suffolk, 
glancing  at  Mademoiselle  Schulemberg,  "Look  at  that  manikin, 
and  think  of  her  being  my  son's  passion  !" 

The  duchess,  however,  like  all  the  Hanoverians,  knew  how 
to  profit  by  royal  preference.  She  took  bribes  ;  she  had  a  set- 
tlement of  £30QO  a  year.  But  her  daughter  was  eventually 
disappointed  of  the  expected  bequest  from  her  father,  the  king.* 

In  the  apartments  at  St.  James's  Lord  Chesterfield  for  some 
time  lived,  when  he  was  not  engaged  in  office  abroad ;  and 

*  Tn  the  "Annual  Register"  for  1774,  p.  20,  it  is  stated  that  as  George  I. 
had  left  Lady  Walsingham  a  legacy  which  his  successor  did  not  think  proper 
to  deliver,  the  Earl  of  Chesterfield  was  determined  to  recover  it  by  a  suit  in 
Chancery,  had  not  his  majesty,  on  questioning  the  Lord  Chancellor  on  the 
subject,  and  being  answered  that  he  could  give  no  opinion  extra-judicially, 
thought  proper  to  fulfill  the  bequest. 


A  EOYAL  BOJiUEK. 


DISSOLVING  VIEWS  211 

there  he  dissipated  large  sums  in  play.  It  was  here,  too,  that 
Queen  Caroline,  the  wife  of  George  II.,  detected  the  intimacy 
that  existed  between  Chesterfield  and  Lady  Suffolk.  There 
was  an  obscure  window  in  Queen  Caroline's  apartments,  which 
looked  into  a  dark  passage,  lighted  only  by  a  single  lamp  at 
night.  One  Twelfth  Night  Lord  Chesterfield,  having  won  a 
large  sum  at  cards,  deposited  it  with  Lady  Suffolk,  thinking  it 
not  safe  to  carry  it  home  at  night.  He  was  watched,  and  his 
intimacy  with  the  mistress  of  George  II.  thereupon  inferred. 
Thenceforth  he  could  obtain  no  court  influence;  and,  in  des- 
peration, he  went  into  the  opposition. 

On  the  death  of  George  I.,  a  singular  scene,  with  which  Lord 
Chesterfield's  interests  were  connected,  occurred  in  the  Privy 
Council.  Dr.  Wake,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  produced  the 
king's  will,  and  delivered  it  to  his  successor,  expecting  that  it 
would  be  opened  and  read  in  the  council ;  what  was  his  con- 
sternation when  his  majesty,  without  saying  a  word,  put  it  into 
his  pocket,  and  stalked  out  of  the  room  with  real  German  im- 
perturbability!  Neither  the  astounded  prelate  nor  the  sub- 
servient council  ventured  to  utter  a  word.  The  will  was  nev- 
er more  heard  of:  rumor  declared  that  it  was  burnt.  The  con- 
tents, of  course,  never  transpired ;  and  the  legacy  of  £40,000, 
said  to  have  been  left  to  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  was  never 
more  spoken  of,  until  Lord  Chesterfield,  in  1733,  married  the 
Countess  of  Walsingham.  In  1 743,  it  is  said,  he  claimed  the 
legacy,  in  right  of  his  wife,  the  Duchess  of  Kendal  being  then 
dead :  and  was  "  quieted"  with  £20,000,  and  got,  as  Horace 
Walpole  observes,  nothing  from  the  duchess — "except  his 
wife." 

The  only  excuse  that  was  urged  to  extenuate  this  act,  on 
the  part  of  George  II.,  was  that  his  royal  father  had  burned 
two  wills  which  had  been  made  in  his  favor.  These  were  sup- 
posed to  be  the  wills  of  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Zell  and  of 
the  Electress  Sophia.  There  was  not  even  common  honesty 
in  the  house  of  Hanover  at  that  period. 

Disappointed  in  his  wife's  fortune,  Lord  Chesterfield  seems 
to  have  cared  very  little  for  the  disappointed  heiress.  Their 
union  was  childless.  His  opinion  of  marriage  appears  very 
much  to  have  coincided  with  that  of  the  world  of  malcontents 
who  rush,  in  the  present  day,  to  the  court  of  Judge  Cresswell, 
with  "  dissolving  views."  On  one  occasion,  he  writes  thus  : 
"  I  have  at  last  done  the  best  office  that  can  be  done  to  most 
married  people ;  that  is,  I  have  fixed  the  separation  between 
my  brother  and  his  wife,  and  the  definitive  treaty  of  peace 
will  be  proclaimed  in  about  a  fortnight." 

Horace  Walpole  related  the  following  anecdote  of  Sir  Wil- 


212  MADAME   DU   BOUCHET. 

liam  Stanhope  (Chesterfield's  brother)  and  his  lady,  whom  he 
calls  a  "  fond  couple."  After  their  return  from  Paris,  when 
they  arrived  at  Lord  Chesterfield's  house  at  Blackheath,  Sir 
William,  who  had,  like  his  brother,  a  cutting,  polite  wit,  that 
was  probably  expressed  with  the  "  allowed  simper"  of  Lord 
Chesterfield,  got  out  of  the  chaise  and  said,  with  a  low  bow, 
"Madame,  I  hope  I  shall  never  see  your  face  again."  She  re- 
plied, "  Sir,  I  will  take  care  that  you  never  shall ;"  and  so  they 
parted. 

There  was  little  probability  of  Lord  Chesterfield's  partici- 
pating in  domestic  felicity,  when  neither  his  heart  nor  his  fan- 
cy were  engaged  in  the  union  which  he  had  formed.  The  lady 
to  whom  he  was  really  attached,  and  by  whom  he  had  a  son, 
resided  in  the  Netherlands :  she  passed  by  the  name  of  Mad- 
ame du  Bouchet,  and  survived  both  Lord  Chesterfield  and  her 
son.  A  permanent  provision  was  made  for  her,  and  a  sum  of 
five  hundred  pounds  bequeathed  to  her,  with  these  words : 
"as  a  small  reparation  for  the  injury  I  did  her."  "  Certainly," 
adds  Lord  Mahon,  in  his  Memoir  of  his  illustrious  ancestor, 
"  a  small  one." 

For  some  time  Lord  Chesterfield  remained  in  England,  and 
his  letters  are  dated  from  Bath,  from  Tonbridge,  from  Black- 
heath.  He  had,  in  1726,  been  elevated  to  the  House  of  Lords 
upon  the  death  of  his  father.  In  that  assembly  his  great  elo- 
quence is  thus  well  described  by  his  biographer  :* 

"  Lord  Chesterfield's  eloquence,  the  fruit  of  much  study, 
was  less  characterized  by  force  and  compass  than  by  elegance 
and  perspicuity,  and  especially  by  good  taste  and  urbanity,  and 
a  vein  of  delicate  irony  which,  while  it  sometimes  inflicted 
severe  strokes,  never  passed  the  limits  of  decency  and  proprie- 
ty. It  was  that  of  a  man  who,  in  the  union  of  wit  and  good 
sense  with  politeness,  had  not  a  competitor.  These  qualities 
were  matured  by  the  advantage  which  he  assiduously  sought 
and  obtained,  of  a  familiar  acquaintance  with  almost  all  the 
eminent  wits  and  writers  of  his  time,  many  of  whom  had 
been  the  ornaments  of  a  preceding  age  of  literature,  while  oth- 
ers were  destined  to  become  those  of  a  later  period." 

The  accession  of  George  II.,  to  whose  court  Lord  Chester- 
field had  been  attached  for  many  years,  brought  him  no  po- 
litical preferment.  The  court  had,  however,  its  attractions, 
even  for  one  who  owed  his  polish  to  the  belles  of  Paris,  and 
who  was  almost  always,  in  taste  and  manners,  more  foreign 
than  English.  Henrietta,  Lady  Pomfret,  the  daughter  and 
heiress  of  John,  Lord  Jeffreys,  the  son  of  Judge  Jeffreys,  was 
at  that  time  the  leader  of  fashion. 

*  Lord  Mahon,  now  Earl  of  Stanhope,  if  not  the  most  eloquent,  one  of 
the  most  honest  historians  of  our  time. 


THE    BKOAD-BOTTOMED    ADMINISTRATION.  213 

Six  daughters,  one  of  them  Lady  Sophia,  surpassingly  love- 
ly, recalled  the  perfections  of  that  ancestress,  Arabella  Fer- 
mor,  whose  charms  Pope  has  so  exquisitely  touched  in  the 
"Rape  of  the  Lock."  Lady  Sophia  became  eventually  the 
wife  of  Lord  Carteret,  the  minister,  whose  talents  and  the 
charms  of  whose  eloquence  constituted  him  a  sort  of  rival  to 
Chesterfield.  With  all  his  abilities,  Lord  Chesterfield  may  be 
said  to  have  failed  both  as  a  courtier  and  as  a  political  charac- 
ter, as  far  as  permanent  influence  in  any  ministry  was  con- 
cerned, until  in  1744,  when  what  was  called  the  "Broad-bot- 
tomed administration"  was  formed,  when  he  was  admitted 
into  the  cabinet.  In  the  following  year,  however,  he  went, 
for  the  last  time,  to  Holland,  as  embassador,  and  succeeded 
beyond  the  expectations  of  his  party  in  the  purposes  of  his  em- 
bassy. He  took  leave  of  the  States-General  just  before  the 
battle  of  Fontenoy,  and  hastened  to  Ireland,  where  he  had 
been  nominated  Lord  Lieutenant  previous  to  his  journey  to 
Holland.  He  remained  in  that  country  only  a  year  ;  but  long 
enough  to  prove  how  liberal  were  his  views — how  kindly  the 
dispositions  of  his  heart. 

Only  a  few  years  before  Lord  Chesterfield's  arrival  in  Dub- 
lin, the  Duke  of  Shrewsbury  had  given  as  a  reason  for  accept- 
ing the  vice-regency  of  that  country  (of  which  King  James 
I.  had  said,  there  was  "  more  ado"  than  with  any  of  his  do- 
minions), "that  it  was  a  place  where  a  man  had  business 
enough  to  keep  him  from  falling  asleep,  and  not  enough  to 
keep  him  awake." 

Chesterfield,  however,  was  not  of  that  opinion.  He  did 
more  in  one  year  than  the  duke  would  have  accomplished  in 
five.  He  began  by  instituting  a  principle  of  impartial  justice. 
Formerly,  Protestants  had  alone  been  employed  as  "mana- 
gers ;"  the  Lieutenant  was  to  see  with  Protestant  eyes,  to  hear 
with  Protestant  ears. 

"  I  have  determined  to  proscribe  no  set  of  persons  what- 
ever," says  Chesterfield,  "  and  determined  to  be  governed  by 
none.  Had  the  Papists  made  any  attempt  to  put  themselves 
above  the  law,  I  should  have  taken  good  care  to  have  quelled 
them  again.  It  was  said  my  lenity  to  the  Papists  had  wrought 
no  alteration  either  in  their  religious  or  their  political  senti- 
ments. I  did  not  expect  that  it  would ;  but  surely  that  was 
no  reason  for  cruelty  toward  them." 

Often  by  a  timely  jest  Chesterfield  conveyed  a  hint,  or  even 
shrouded  a  reproof.  One  of  the  ultra-zealous  informed  him 
that  his  coachman  was  a  Papist,  and  went  every  Sunday  to 
mass.  "  Does  he  indeed  ?  I  will  take  care  he  never  drives 
me  there,"  was  Chesterfield's  cool  reply. 


214  REFORMATION  OF  THE  CALENDAR. 

It  was  at  this  critical  period,  when  the  Hanoverian  dynasty 
was  shaken  almost  to  its  downfall  by  the  insurrection  in  Scot- 
land of  1745,  that  Ireland  was  imperiled:  "With  a  weak  or 
wavering,  or  a  fierce  and  headlong  Lord  Lieutenant — with  a 
Grafton  or  a  Strafford,"  remarks  Lord  Mahon,  "  there  would 
soon  have  been  a  simultaneous  rising  in  the  Emerald  Isle." 
But  Chesterfield's  energy,  his  lenity,  his  wise  and  just  admin- 
istration saved  the  Irish  from  being  excited  into  rebellion  by 
the  emissaries  of  Charles  Edward,  or  slaughtered,  when  con- 
quered, by  the  "  Butcher,"  and  his  tiger-like  dragoons.  When 
all  was  over,  and  that  sad  page  of  history  in  which  the  deaths 
of  so  many  faithful  adherents  of  the  exiled  family  are  record- 
ed, had  been  held  up  to  the  gaze  of  bleeding  Caledonia,  Ches- 
terfield recommended  mild  measures,  and  advised  the  estab- 
lishment of  schools  in  the  Highlands ;  but  the  age  was  too 
narrow-minded  to  adopt  his  views.  In  January,  1748,  Ches- 
terfield retired  from  public  life.  "  Could  I  do  any  good,"  he 
wrote  to  a  friend,  "  I  would  sacrifice  some  more  quiet  to  it ; 
but  convinced  as  I  am  that  I  can  do  none,  I  will  indulge  my 
ease,  and  preserve  my  character.  I  have  gone  through  pleas- 
ures while  my  constitution  and  my  spirits  would  allow  me. 
Business  succeeded  them;  and  I  have  now  gone  through  every 
part  of  it  without  liking  it  at  all  the  better  for  being  ac- 
quainted with  it.  Like  many  other  things,  it  is  most  admired 
by  those  who  know  it  least.  ...  I  have  been  behind  the  scenes 
both  of  pleasure  and  business ;  I  have  seen  all  the  coarse  pul- 
leys and  dirty  ropes  which  exhibit  and  move  all  the  gaudy  ma- 
chines ;  and  I  have  seen  and  smelt  the  tallow  candles  which 
illuminate  the  whole  decoration,  to  the  astonishment  and  ad- 
miration of  the  ignorant  multitude.  .  .  .  My  horse,  my  books, 
and  my  friends  will  divide  my  time  pretty  equally." 

He  still  interested  himself  in  what  was  useful;  and  carried 
a  Bill  in  the  House  of  Lords  for  the  Reformation  of  the  Calen- 
dar, in  1751.  It  seems  a  small  matter  for  so  great  a  mind  as 
his  to  accomplish,  but  it  was  an  achievement  of  infinite  diffi- 
culty. Many  statesmen  had  shrunk  from  the  undertaking; 
and  even  Chesterfield  found  it  essential  to  prepare  the  public, 
by  writing  in  some  periodical  papers  on  the  subject.  Nev- 
ertheless the  vulgar  outcry  was  vehement :  "  Give  us  back 
the  eleven  days  we  have  been  robbed  <jf !"  cried  the  mob  at 
a  general  election.  When  Bradley  was  dying,  the  common 
people  ascribed  his  sufferings  to  a  judgment  for  the  part  he 
had  taken  in  that  "  impious  transaction,"  the  alteration  of  the 
calendar.  But  they  were  not  less  homes  in  their  notions  than 
the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  then  prime  minister.  Upon  Lord 
Chesterfield  giving  him  notice  of  his  bill,  that  bustling  prem- 


CHESTERFIELD   HOUSE.  215 

ier,  who  had  been  in  a  hurry  for  forty  years,  who  never  "walk- 
ed but  always  ran,"  greatly  alarmed,  begged  Chesterfield  not 
to  stir  matters  that  had  been  long  quiet ;  adding,  that  he  did 
not  like  "  new-fangled  things."  He  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
overruled,  and  henceforth  the  New  Style  was  adopted ;  and 
no  special  calamity  has  fallen  on  the  nation,  as  was  expected, 
in  consequence.  Nevertheless,  after  Chesterfield  had  made  his 
speech  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  when  every  one  had  com- 
plimented him  on  the  clearness  of  his  explanation — "  God 
knows,"  he  wrote  to  his  son,  "  I  had  not  even  attempted  to 
explain  the  bill  to  them ;  I  might  as  soon  have  talked  Celtic  or 
Sclavonic  to  them,  as  astronomy.  They  would  have  understood 
it  full  as  well."  So  much  for  the  "  Lords"  in  those  days ! 

After  his  furore  for  politics  had  subsided,  Chesterfield  re- 
turned to  his  ancient  passion  for  play.  We  must  linger  a  lit- 
tle over  the  still  brilliant  period  of  his  middle  life,  while  his 
hearing  was  spared ;  while  his  wit  remained,  and  the  charming 
manners  on  which  he  had  formed  a  science,  continued ;  and 
before  we  see  him  in  the  mournful  decline  of  a  life  wholly  giv- 
en to  the  world. 

He  had  now  established  himself  in  Chesterfield  House. 
Hitherto  his  progenitors  had  been  satisfied  with  Bloomsbury 
Square,  in  which  the  Lord  Chesterfield  mentioned  by  De  Gram- 
mont  resided ;  but  the  accomplished  Chesterfield  chose  a  site 
near  Auclley  Street,  which  had  been  built  on  what  was  called 
Mr.  Audley's  land,  lying  between  Great  Brook  Field  and  the 
"  Shoulder  of  Mutton  Field."  And  near  this  locality  with  the 
elegant  name,  Chesterfield  chose  his  spot,  for  which  he  had  to 
wrangle  and  fight  with  the  Dean  and  Chapter  of  Westminster, 
who  asked  an  exorbitant  sum  for  the  ground.  Isaac  Ware, 
the  editor  of  "  Palladio,"  was  the  architect  to  whom  the  erec- 
tion of  this  handsome  residence  was  intrusted.  Happily,  it  is 
still  untouched  by  any  renovating  hand.  Chesterfield's  favor- 
ite apartments,  looking  on  the  most  spacious  private  garden 
in  London,  are  just  as  they  were  in  his  time ;  one  especially, 
which  he  termed  the  "  finest  room  in  London,"  was  furnished 
and  decorated  'by  him.  "  The  walls,"  says  a  writer  in  the 
"  Quarterly  Review,"  "  are  covered  half  way  up  with  rich  and 
classical  stores  of  literature ;  above  the  cases  are  in  close  series 
the  portraits  of  eminent  authors,  French  and  English,  'with 
most  of  whom  he  had  conversed  ;  over  these,  and  immediately 
under  the  massive  cornice,  extend  all  round  in  foot-long  capi- 
tals the  Horatian  lines : 

"Nunc  .  veterum  .  libris  .  Nunc  .  somno  .  et  .  inertibus  .  Horis. 
Lueen  .  solicter  .  jucunda  .  oblivia  .  vitea. 

"  On  the  mantle-pieces  and  cabinets  stand  busts  of  old  ora- 


216  EXCLUSIVENESS. 

tors,  interspersed  with  voluptuous  vases  and  bronzes,  antique 
or  Italian,  and  airy  statuettes  in  marble  or  alabaster  of  nude 
or  semi-nude  opera  nymphs." 

What  Chesterfield  called  the  "cannonical  pillars"  of  the 
house  were  columns  brought  from  Cannons,  near  Edgeware, 
the  seat  of  the  Duke  of  Chandos.  The  antechamber  of  Ches- 
terfield House  has  been  erroneously  stated  as  the  room  in 
which  Johnson  waited  the  great  lord's  pleasure.  That  state  of 
endurance  was  probably  passed  by  "  Old  Samuel"  in  Blooms- 
bury. 

In  this  stately  abode — one  of  the  few,  the  very  few,  that 
seem  to  hold  noblesse  apart  in  our  leveling  metropolis — Ches- 
terfield held  his  assemblies  of  all  that  London,  or  indeed  En- 
gland, Paris,  the  Hague,  or  Vienna,  could  furnish  of  what  was 
polite  and  charming.  Those  were  days  when  the  stream  of 
society  did  not,  as  now,  flow  freely,  mingling  with  the  grace 
of  aristocracy  the  acquirements  of  hard-working  professors : 
there  was  then  a  strong  line  of  demarkation ;  it  had  not  been 
broken  down  in  the  same  way  as  now,  when  people  of  rank 
and  wealth  live  in  rows,  instead  of  inhabiting  hotels  set  apart. 
Paris  has  sustained  a  similar  revolution,  since  her  gardens 
were  built  over,  and  their  green  shades,  delicious,  in  the  cen- 
tre of  that  hot  city,  are  seen  no  more.  In  the  very  Faubourg 
St.  Germain,  the  grand  old  hotels  are  rapidly  disappearing,  and 
with  them  something  of  the  exclusiveness  of  the  higher  or- 
ders. Lord  Chesterfield,  however,  triumphantly  pointing  to 
the  fruits  of  his  taste,  and  distribution  of  his  wealth,  witnessed 
in  his  library  at  Chesterfield  House,  the  events  which  time 
produced.  He  heard  of  the  death  of  Sarah,  Duchess  of  Marl- 
borough,  and  of  her  bequest  to  him  of  twenty  thousand  pounds, 
and  her  best  and  largest  brilliant  diamond  ring,  "  out  of  the 
great  regard  she  had  for  his  merit,  and  the  infinite  obligations 
she  had  received  from  him."  He  witnessed  the  change  of  so- 
ciety and  of  politics  which  occurred  when  George  II.  expired, 
and  the  Earl  of  Bute,  calling  himself  a  descendant  of  the  house 
of  Stuart,  "  and  humble  enough  to  be  proud  of  it,"  having 
quitted  the  Isle  of  Bute,  which  Lord  Chesterfield  calls  "  but  a 
little  south  of  Nova  Zembla,"  took  possession,  not  only  of  the 
affections,  but  even  of  the  senses  of  the  young  king,  George 
III.,  who,  assisted  by  the  widowed  Princess  of  Wales  (sup- 
posed to  be  attached  to  Lord  Bute),  was  "lugged  out  of  the 
seraglio,"  and  "  placed  upon  the  throne." 

Chesterfield  lived  to  have  the  honor  of  having  the  plan  of 
"  Johnson's  Dictionary"  inscribed  to  him,  and  the  dishonor  of 
neglecting  the  great  author.  Johnson,  indeed,  denied  the  truth 
of  the  story  which  gamed  general  belief,  in  which  it  was  as- 


RECOMMENDING   "JOHNSONS   DICTIONARY."  217 

serted  that  he  had  taken  a  disgust  at  being  kept  waiting  in 
the  earl's  antechamber,  the  reason  being  assigned  that  his  lord- 
ship "  had  company  with  him ;"  when  at  last  the  door  opened, 
and  forth  came  Colley  Cibber.  Then  Johnson — so  report  said 
— indignant,  not  only  for  having  been  kept  waiting,  but  also 
for  whom,  went  away,  it  was  affirmed,  in  disgust ;  but  this 
was  solemnly  denied  by  the  doctor,  who  assured  Boswell  that 
his  wrath  proceeded  from  continual  neglect  on  the  part  of 
Chesterfield. 

While  the  Dictionary  was  in  progress,  Chesterfield  seemed 
to  forget  the  existence  of  him,  whom,  together  with  other  lit- 
erary men,  he  affected  to  patronize. 

He  once  sent  him  ten  pounds,  after  which  he  forgot  John- 
son's address,  and  said  "the  great  author  had  changed  his 
lodgings."  People  who  really  wish  to  benefit  others  can  al- 
ways discover  where  they  lodge.  The  days  of  patronage  were 
then  expiring,  but  they  had  not  quite  ceased,  and  a  dedication 
was  always  to  be  in  some  way  paid  for. 

When  the  publication  of  the  Dictionary  drew  near,  Lord 
Chesterfield  flattered  himself  that,  in  spite  of  all  his  neglect, 
the  great  compliment  of  having  so  vast  an  undertaking  dedi- 
cated to  him  would  still  be  paid,  and  wrote  some  papers  in  the 
"  World,"  recommending  the  work,  more  especially  referring 
to  the  "  plan,"  and  terming  Johnson  the  "  dictator,"  in  respect 
to  language :  "  I  will  not  only  obey  him,"  he  said,  "  as  my  dic- 
tator, like  an  old  Roman,  but  like  a  modern  Roman,  will  im- 
plicitly believe  in  him  as  my  pope." 

Johnson,  however,  was  not  to  be  propitiated  by  those  "  hon- 
eyed words."  He  wrote  a  letter  couched  in  what  he  called 
"  civil  terms,"  to  Chesterfield,  from  which  we  extract  the  fol- 
lowing passages : 

"  When,  upon  some  slight  encouragement,  I  first  visited  your 
lordship,  I  was  overpowered,  like  the  rest  of  mankind,  by  the 
enchantment  of  your  address ;  and  could  not  forbear  to  wish 
that  I  might  boast  myself  vainqueitr  du  vainqueur  de  la  terre 
— that  I  might  obtain  that  regard  for  which  I  saw  the  world 
contending ;  but  I  found  my  attendance  so  little  encouraged, 
that  neither  pride  nor  modesty  would  suffer  me  to  continue  it. 
When  I  had  once  addressed  your  lordship  in  publick,  I  had  ex- 
hausted all  the  art  of  pleasing  which  a  retired  and  uncourtly 
scholar  can  possess.  I  had  done  all  that  I  could ;  and  no  man 
is  well  pleased  to  have  his  all  neglected,  be  it  ever  so  little. 

"  Seven  years,  my  lord,  have  now  passed,  since  I  waited  in 
your  outward  room,  or  was  repulsed  from  your  door,  during 
which  time  I  have  been  pushing  on  my  work  through  difficul- 
ties, of  which  it  is  useless  to  complain,  and  have  brought  it,  at 

K 


218     DEFENSIVE  PBIDE  OF  THE  "  RESPECTABLE  HOTTENTOT." 

last,  to  the  verge  of  publication  without  one  act  of  assistance, 
one  word  of  encouragement,  or  one  smile  of  favour  :<  such  treat- 
ment I  did  not  expect,  for  I  never  had  a  patron  before 

Is  not  a  patron,  my  lord,  one  who  looks  with  unconcern  on  a 
man  who  is  struggling  for  life  in  the  water,  and,  when  he  has 
reached  ground,  encumbers  him  with  help  ?  The  notice  which 
you  have  been  pleased  to  take  of  my  labours,  had  it  been  early, 
had  been  kind ;  but  it  has  been  delayed  till  I  am  indiiferent, 
and  cannot  enjoy  it ;  till  I  am  solitary,  and  cannot  impart  it ; 
till  I  am  known,  and  do  not  want  it.  I  hope  it  is  no  very  cyn- 
ical asperity  not  to  confess  obligations  where  no  benefit  has 
been  received,  or  to  be  unwilling  that  the  publick  should  con- 
sider me  as  owing  that  to  a  patron  which  Providence  has  ena- 
bled me  to  do  for  myself." 

The  conduct  of  Johnson,  on  this  occasion,  was  approved  by 
most  manly  minds,  except  that  of  his  publisher,  Mr.  Robert 
Dodsley ;  Dr.  Adams,  a  friend  of  Dodsley,  said  he  was  sorry 
that  Johnson  had  written  that  celebrated  letter  (a  very  model 
of  polite  contempt).  Dodsley  said  he  was  sorry  too,  for  he 
had  a  property  in  the  Dictionary,  to  which  his  lordship's  pat- 
ronage might  be  useful.  He  then  said  that  Lord  Chesterfield 
had  shown  him  the  letter.  "I  should  have  thought,"  said 
Adams,  "that  Lord  Chesterfield  would  have  concealed  it." 
"  Pooh !"  cried  Dodsley,  "  do  you  think  a  letter  from  Johnson 
could  hurt  Lord  Chesterfield  ?  not  at  all,  sir.  It  lay  on  his  ta- 
ble where  any  one  might  see  it.  He  read  it  to  me ;  said, '  this 
man  has  great  powers,'  pointed  out  the  severest  passages,  and 
said, '  how  well  they  were  expressed.' "  The  art  of  dissimu- 
lation, in  which  Chesterfield  was  perfect,  imposed  on  Mr. 
Dodsley. 

Dr.  Adams  expostulated  with  the  doctor,  and  said  Lord 
Chesterfield  declared  he  would  part  with  the  best  servant  he 
had,  if  he  had  known  that  he  had  turned  away  a  man  who 
was  "  always  welcome."  Then  Adams  insisted  on  Lord  Ches- 
terfield's affability,  and  easiness  of  access  to  literary  men.  But 
the  sturdy  Johnson  replied,  "Sir,  that  is  not  Lord  Chester- 
field ;  he  is  the  proudest  man  existing."  "  I  think,"  Adams 
rejoined,  "  I  know  one  that  is  prouder ;  you,  by  your  own  ac- 
count, are  the  prouder  of  the  two."  "But  mine,"  Johnson 
answered,  with  one  of  his  happy  turns,  "  was  defensive  pride." 
"  This  man,"  he  afterward  said,  referring  to  Chesterfield,  "  I 
thought  had  been  a  lord  among  wits,  but  I  find  he  is  only  a 
wit  among  lords." 

In  revenge,  Chesterfield  in  his  Letters  depicted  Johnson, 
it  is  said,  in  the  character  of  the  "  respectable  Hottentot." 
Among  other  things  he  observed  of  the  Hottentot,  "he  throws 


THE   GLASS    OF   FASHION.  219 

his  meat  any  where  but  down  his  throat."  This  being  remark- 
ed to  Johnson,  who  was  by  no  means  pleased  at  being  immor- 
talized as  the  Hottentot — "  Sir,"  he  answered,  "  Lord  Chester- 
field never  saw  me  eat  in  his  life." 

Such  are  the  leading  points  of  this  famous  and  lasting  con- 
troversy. It  is  amusing  to  know  that  Lord  Chesterfield  was 
not  always  precise  as  to  directions  to  his  letters.  He  once  di- 
rected to  Lord  Pembroke,  who  was  always  swimming,  "  To 
the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  in  the  Thames,  over  against  White- 
hall." This,  as  Horace  Walpole  remarks,  "  was  sure  of  find- 
ing him  within  a  certain  fathom." 

Lord  Chesterfield  was  now  admitted  to  be  the  very  "  glass 
of  fashion,"  though  age,  and,  according  to  Lord  Hervey,  a 
hideous  person,  impeded  his  being  the  "  mould  of  form."  "  I 
don't  know  why,"  writes  Horace  Walpole,  in  the  dog-days, 
from  Strawberry  Hill,  "but  people  are  always  more  anxious 
about  their  hay  than  their  corn,  or  twenty  other  things  that 
cost  them  more :  I  suppose  my  Lord  Chesterfield,  or  some 
such  dictator,  made  it  fashionable  to  care  about  one's  hay. 
Nobody  betrays  solicitude  about  getting  in  his  rents."  "  The 
prince  of  wits,"  as  the  same  authority  calls  him — uhis  entrance 
into  the  world  was  announced  by  his  bon-mots,  and  his  closing 
lips  dropped  repartees  that  sparkled  with  his  juvenile  fire." 

No  one,  it  was  generally  allowed,  had  such  a  force  of  table- 
wit  as  Lord  Chesterfield ;  but  while  the  "  Graces"  were  ever 
his  theme,  he  indulged  himself  without  distinction  or  consid- 
eration in  numerous  sallies.  He  was,  therefore,  at  once  sought 
and  feared ;  liked  but  not  loved ;  neither  sex,  nor  relationship, 
nor  rank,  nor  friendship,  nor  obligation,  nor  profession,  could 
shield  his  victim  from  what  Lord  Hervey  calls  "  those  pointed, 
glittering  weapons,  that  seemed  to  shine  only  to  a  stander-by, 
but  cut  deep  into  those  they  touched." 

He  cherished  "  a  voracious  appetite  for  abuse ;"  fell  upon 
every  one  that  came  in  his  way,  and  thus  treated  each  one  of 
his  companions  at  the  expense  of  the  other.     To  him  Hervey, 
who  had  probably  often  smarted,  applied  the  lines  of  Boileau : 
"Mais  c'est  un  petit  feu  qui  se  croit  tout  permis, 
Et  qui  pour  un  bon  mot  va  perdre  vingt  amis." 

Horace  Walpole  (a  more  lenient  judge  of  Chesterfield's  merits) 
observes  that  "  Chesterfield  took  no  less  pains  to  be  the  phoe- 
nix of  fine  gentlemen,  than  Tully  did  to  qualify  himself  as  an 
orator.  Both  succeeded :  Tully  immortalized  his  name ;  Ches- 
terfield's reign  lasted  a  little  longer  than  that  of  a  fashionable 
beauty."  It  was,  perhaps,  because,  as  Dr.  Johnson  said,  all 
Lord  Chesterfield's  witty  sayings  were  puns,  that  even  this 
brilliant  wit  failed  to  please,  although  it  amused  and  surprised 
its  hearers. 


£20  THE  DEATH   OF   CHESTERFIELD'S   SON. 

Notwithstanding  the  contemptuous  description  of  Lord  Ches- 
terfield's personal  appearance  by  Lord  Hervey,  his  portraits  rep- 
resent a  handsome,  though  hard  countenance,  well-marked  fea- 
tures, and  his  figure  and  air  appear  to  have  been  elegant.  With 
his  commanding  talents,  his  wonderful  brilliancy  and  fluency  of 
conversation,  he  would  perhaps  sometimes  have  been  even  te- 
dious, had  it  not  been  for  his  invariable  cheerfulness.  He  was  al- 
ways, as  Lord  Hervey  says,  "  present"  in  his  company.  Among 
the  few  friends  who  really  loved  this  thorough  man  of  the  world, 
was  Lord  Scarborough,  yet  no  two  characters  were  more  op- 
posite. Lord  Scarborough  had  judgment,  without  wit :  Ches- 
terfield wit,  and  no  judgment ;  Lord  Scarborough  had  honesty 
and  principle ;  Lord  Chesterfield  had  neither.  Every  body  liked 
the  one,  but  did  not  care  for  his  company.  Every  one  disliked 
the  other,  but  wished  for  his  company.  The  fact  was,  Scar- 
borough was  "  splendid  and  absent ;"  Chesterfield,  u  cheerful 
and  present :"  wit,  grace,  attention  to  what  is  passing,  the  sur- 
face, as  it  were,  of  a  highly-cultured  mind,  produced  a  fascina- 
tion that  all  the  honor  and  respectability  in  the  court  of  George 
II.  could  not  compete  with. 

In  the  earlier  part  of  Chesterfield's  career,  Pope,  Boling- 
broke,  Hervey,  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  and,  in  fact, 
all  that  could  add  to  the  pleasures  of  the  then  early  dinner- 
table,  illumined  Chesterfield  House  by  their  wit  and  gayety. 
Yet  in  the  midst  of  this  exciting  life,  Lord  Chesterfield  found 
time  to  devote  to  the  improvement  of  his  natural  son,  Philip 
Stanhope,  a  great  portion  of  his  leisure.  His  celebrated  Let- 
ters to  that  son  did  not,  however,  appear  during  the  earl's  life ; 
nor  were  they  in  any  way  the  source  of  his  popularity  as  a  wit, 
which  was  due  to  his  merits  in  that  line  alone. 

The  youth  to  whom  these  letters,  so  useful,  and  yet  so  ob- 
jectionable, were  addressed,  was  intended  for  a  diplomatist. 
He  was  the  very  rpverse  of  his  father :  learned,  sensible,  and 
dry;  but  utterly  wanting  in  the  graces,  and  devoid  of  elo- 
quence. As  an  orator,  therefore,  he  failed ;  as  a  man  of  soci- 
ety, he  must  also  have  failed;  and  his  death,  in  1768,  some 
years  before  that  of  his  father,  left  that  father  desolate  and 
disappointed.  Philip  Stanhope  had  attained  the  rank  of  en- 
voy to  Dresden,  where  he  expired. 

During  the  five  years  in  which  Chesterfield  dragged  out  a 
mournful  life  after  this  event,  he  made  the  painful  discovery 
that  his  son  had  married,  without  confiding  that  step  to  the 
father  to  whom  he  owed  so  much.  This  must  have  been  al- 
most as  trying  as  the  awkward,  ungraceful  deportment  of  him 
whom  he  mourned.  The  world  now  left  Chesterfield  ere  he 
had  left  the  world.  He  and  his  contemporary,  Lord  Tyraw- 


HIS   INTEREST  IN   HIS   GRANDSONS.  221 

ley,  were  now  old  and  infirm.  "  The  fact  is,"  Chesterfield  wit- 
tily said,  "Tyrawley  and  I  have  been  dead  these  two  years, 
but  we  don't  choose  to  have  it  known." 

"  The  Bath,"  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Dayrolles,  "  did  me  more 

food  than  I  thought  any  thing  could  do  me ;  but  all  that  good 
oes  not  amount  to  what  builders  call  half-repairs,  and  only 
keeps  up  the  shattered  fabric  a  little  longer  than  it  would 
have  stood  without  them ;  but  take  my  word  for  it,  it  will 
stand  but  a  very  little  while  longer.  I  am  now  in  my  grand 
climacteric,  and  shall  not  complete  it.  Fontenelle's  last  words 
at  a  hundred  and  three  were,  Je  souffre  d'etre :  deaf  and  in- 
firm as  I  am,  I  can  with  truth  say  the  same  thing  at  sixty-three. 
In  my  mind  it  is  only  the  strength  of  our  passions,  and  the 
weakness  of  our  reason,  that  makes  us  so  fond  of  life ;  but  when 
the  former  subside  and  give  way  to  the  latter,  we  grow  weary 
of  being,  and  willing  to  withdraw.  I  do  not  recommend  this 
train  of  serious  reflections  to  you,  nor  ought  you  to  adopt  them. 
.  .  .  You  have  children  to  educate  and  provide  for,  you  have 
all  your  senses,  and  can  enjoy  all  the  comforts  both  of  domes- 
tic and  social  life.  I  am  in  every  sense  isole,  and  have  wound 
up  all  my  bottoms  ;  I  may  now  walk  off  quietly,  without  miss- 
ing nor  being  missed." 

The  kindness  of  his  nature,  corrupted  as  it  was  by  a  life 
wholly  worldly,  and  but  little  illumined  in  its  course  by  relig- 
ion, shone  now  in  his  care  of  his  two  grandsons,  the  offspring 
of  his  lost  son,  and  of  their  mother,  Eugenia  Stanhope.  To 
her  he  thus  wrote : 

"  The  last  time  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you,  I  was  so 
taken  up  in  playing  with  the  boys,  that  I  forgot  their  more 
important  affairs.  How  soon  would  you  have  them  placed  at 
school  ?  When  I  know  your  pleasure  as  to  that,  I  will  send 
to  Monsieur  Perny,  to  prepare  every  thing  for  their  reception. 
In  the  mean  time,  I  beg  that  you  will  equip  them  thoroughly 
with  clothes,  linen,  etc.,  all  good,  but  plain ;  and  give  me  the 
amount,  which  I  will  pay ;  for  I  do  not  intend,  from  this  time 
forward,  the  two  boys  should  cost  you  one  shilling-." 

He  lived,  latterly,  much  at  Blackheath,  in  the  house  which, 
being  built  on  Crown  land,  has  finally  become  the  Ranger's 
lodge ;  but  which  still  sometimes  goes  by  the  name  of  Ches- 
terfield House.  Here  he  spent  large  sums,  especially  on  pic- 
tures, and  cultivated  Cantaloupe  melons ;  and  here,  as  he  grew 
older,  and  became  permanently  afflicted  with  deafness,  his 
chief  companion  was  a  useful  friend,  Solomon  Dayrolles — one 
of  those  indebted  hangers-on  whom  it  was  an  almost  invaria- 
ble custom  to  find,  at  that  period,  in  great  houses — and  per- 
haps too  frequently  in  our  own  day. 


222  "l   MUST   GO   AND   KEHEAESE   MY   FUNEKAL." 

Dayrolles,  who  was  employed  in  the  embassy  under  Lord 
Sandwich  at  the  Hague,  had  always,  to  borrow  Horace  Wai- 
pole's  ill-natured  expression,  "  been  a  led-captain  to  the  Dukes 
of  Richmond  and  Grafton,  used  to  be  sent  to  auctions  for 
them,  and  to  walk  in  the  parks  with  their  daughters,  and  once 
went  dry-nurse  in  Holland  with  them.  He  has  belonged,  too, 
a  good  deal  to  my  Lord  Chesterfield,  to  whom  I  believe  he 
owes  this  new  honor, '  that  of  being  minister  at  the  Hague,'  as 
he  had  before  made  him  black-rod  in  Ireland,  and  gave  the  in- 
genious reason,  that  he  had  a  black  face."  But  the  great 
"  dictator"  in  the  empire  of  politeness  was  now  in  a  slow  but 
sure  decline.  Not  long  before  his  death  he  was  visited  by 
Monsieur  Suard,  a  French  gentleman,  who  was  anxious  to  see 
"  Vhomme  le  plus  aimable,  le  plus  poll  et  le  plus  spirituel  des 
trois  royaumes"  but  who  found  him  fearfully  altered ;  morose, 
from  his  deafness,  yet  still  anxious  to  please.  "  It  is  very  sad," 
he  said  with  his  usual  politeness,  "  to  be  deaf,  when  one  would 
so  much  enjoy  listening.  I  am  not,"  he  added,  "  so  philosophic 
as  my  friend  the  President  de  Montesquieu,  who  says, '  I  know 
how  to  be  blind,  but  I  do  not  yet  know  how  to  be  deaf.' " 
"  We  shortened  our  visit,"  says  M.  Suard, "  lest  we  should  fa- 
tigue the  earl."  "I  do  not  detain  you,"  said  Chesterfield, 
"for  I  must  go  and  rehearse  my  funeral."  It  was  thus  that 
he  styled  his  daily  drive  through  the  streets  of  London. 

Lord  Chesterfield's  wonderful  memory  continued  till  his  lat- 
est hour.  As  he  lay,  gasping  in  the  last  agonies  of  extreme 
debility,  his  friend,  Mr.  Dayrolles,  called  in  to  see  him  half  an 
hour  before  he  expired.  The  politeness  which  had  become  part 
of  his  very  nature  did  not  desert  the  dying  earl.  He  man- 
aged to  say,  in  a  low  voice,  to  his  valet,  "  Give  Dayrolles  a 
chair."  This  little  trait  greatly  struck  the  famous  Dr.  War- 
ren, who  was  at  the  bedside  of  this  brilliant  and  wonderful 
man.  He  died  on  the  24th  of  March,  1773,  in  the  79th  year 
of  his  age. 

The  preamble  to  a  codicil  (Feb.  11,  1773)  contains  the  fol- 
lowing striking  sentences,  written  when  the  intellect  was  im- 
pressed with  the  solemnity  of  that  solemn  change  which  comes 
alike  to  the  unreflecting  and  to  the  heart-stricken  holy  be- 
liever : 

"  I  most  humbly  recommend  my  soul  to  the  extensive  mercy 
of  that  Eternal,  Supreme,  Intelligent  Being  who  gave  it  me ; 
most  earnestly,  at  the  same  time,  deprecating  his  justice.  Sa- 
tiated with  the  pompous  follies  of  this  life,  of  which  I  have  had 
an  uncommon  share,  I  would  have  no  posthumous  ones  dis- 
played at  my  funeral,  and  therefore  desire  to  be  buried  in  the 


223 

next  bury  ing-place  to  the  place  where  I  shall  die,  and  limit  the 
whole  expense  of  my  funeral  to  £100." 

His  body  was  interred,  according  to  his  wish,  in  the  vault  of 
the  chapel  in  South  Audley  Street,  but  it  was  afterward  re- 
moved to  the  family  burial-place  in  Shelford  Church,  Notting- 
hamshire. 

In  his  will  he  left  legacies  to  his  servants.*  "  I  consider 
them,"  he  said,  "  as  unfortunate  friends ;  my  equals  by  nature, 
and  my  inferiors  only  in  the  difference  of  our  fortunes."  There 
was  something  lofty  in  the  mind  that  prompted  that  sentence. 

His  estates  reverted  to  a  distant  kinsman,  descended  from 
a  younger  son  of  the  first  earl ;  and  it  is  remarkable,  on  look- 
ing through  the  Peerage  of  Great  Britain,  to  perceive  how 
often  this  has  been  the  case  in  a  race  remarkable  for  the  ab- 
sence of  virtue.  Interested  marriages,  vicious  habits,  perhaps 
account  for  the  fact ;  but  retributive  justice,  though  it  be  pre- 
sumptuous to  trace  its  course,  is  every  where. 

He  had  so  great  a  horror  in  his  last  days  of  gambling,  that 
in  bequeathing  his  possessions  to  his  heir,  as  he  expected,  and 
godson,  Philip  Stanhope,  he  inserts  this  clause : 

"  In  case  my  said  godson,  Philip  Stanhope,  shall  at  any  time 
hereinafter  keep,  or  be  concerned  in  keeping  of,  any  race-horses, 
or  pack  of  hounds,  or  reside  one  night  at  Newmarket,  that  in- 
famous seminary  of  iniquity  and  ill-manners,  during  the  course 
of  the  races  there ;  or  shall  resort  to  the  said  races ;  or  shall 
lose,  in  any  one  day,  at  any  game  or  bet  whatsoever,  the  sum 
of  £500,  then,  in  any  the  cases  aforesaid,  it  is  my  express  will 
that  he,  my  said  godson,  shall  forfeit  and  pay,  out  of  my  es- 
tate, the  sum  of  £5000  to  and  for  the  use  of  the  Dean  and 
Chapter  of  Westminster." 

When  we  say  that  Lord  Chesterfield  was  a  man  who  had 
no  friend,  we  sum  up  his  character  in  those  few  words.  Just 
after  his  death,  a  small  but  distinguished  party  of  men  dined 
together  at  Topham  Beauclerk's.  There  was  Sir  Joshua  Rey- 
nolds ;  Sir  William  Jones,  the  orientalist ;  Bennet  Langton ; 
Steevens;  Boswell;  Johnson.  The  conversation  turned  on 
Garrick,  who,  Johnson  said,  had  friends,  but  no  friend.  Then 
Boswell  asked,  what  is  a  friend  ?  One  who  comforts  and  sup- 
ports you,  while  others  do  not.  "  Friendship,  you  know,  sir, 
is  the  cordial  drop  to  make  the  nauseous  draught  of  life  go 
down."  Then  one  of  the  company  mentioned  Lord  Chester- 
field as  one  who  had  no  friend ;  and  Boswell  said :  "  Garrick 
was  pure  gold,  but  beat  out  to  thin  leaf,  Lord  Chesterfield  was 
*  Two  years'  wages  were  left  to  the  servants. 


224  LES  MANIEKE3  NOBLES. 

tinsel."  And,  for  once,  Johnson  did  not  contradict  him.  But 
not  so  do  we  judge  Lord  Chesterfield.  He  was  a  man  who 
acted  on  false  principles  through  life ;  and  those  principles 
gradually  undermined  every  thing  that  was  noble  and  gener- 
ous in  character;  just  as  those  deep  underground  currents, 
noiseless  in  their  course,  work  through  fine-grained  rock,  and 
produce  a  chasm.  Every  thing  with  Chesterfield  was  self:  for 
self,  and  for  self  alone,  were  agreeable  qualities  to  be  assumed ; 
for  self,  was  the  country  to  be  served,  because  that  country 
protects  and  serves  us ;  for  self,  were  friends  to  be  sought  and 
cherished,  as  useful  auxiliaries,  or  pleasant  accessories :  in  the 
very  core  of  the  cankered  heart,  that  advocated  this  corrupting 
doctrine  of  expediency,  lay  unbelief;  that  worm  which  never 
died  in  the  hearts  of  so  many  illustrious  men  of  that  period — 
the  refrigerator  of  the  feelings. 

One  only  gentle  and  genuine  sentiment  possessed  Lord  Ches- 
terfield, and  that  was  his  love  for  his  son.  Yet  in  this  affec- 
tion the  worldly  man  might  be  seen  in  mournful  colors.  He 
did  not  seek  to  render  his  son  good ;  his  sole  desire  was  to  see 
him  successful:  every  lesson  that  he  taught  him,  in  those 
matchless  Letters  which  have  carried  down  Chesterfield's  fame 
to  us  when  his  other  productions  have  virtually  expired,  ex- 
poses a  code  of  dissimulation  which  Philip  Stanhope,  in  his 
marriage,  turned  upon  the  father  to  whom  he  owed  so  much 
care  and  advancement.  These  Letters  are,  in  fact,  a  complete 
exposition  of  Lord  Chesterfield's  character  and  views  of  life. 
No  other  man  could  have  written  them ;  no  other  man  have 
conceived  the  notion  of  existence  being  one  great  effort  to  de- 
ceive, as  well  as  to  excel,  and  of  society  forming  one  gigantic 
lie.  It  is  true  they  were  addressed  to  one  who  was  to  enter 
the  maze  of  a  diplomatic  career,  and  must  be  taken,  on  that 
account,  with  some  reservation. 

They  have  justly  been  condemned  on  the  score  of  immoral- 
ity ;  but  we  must  remember  that  the  age  in  which  they  were 
written  was  one  of  lax  notions,  especially  among  men  of  rank, 
who  regarded  all  women  accessible,  either  from  indiscretion  or 
inferiority  of  rank,  as  fair  game,  and  acted  accordingly.  But 
while  we  agree  with  one  of  John  son's  bitterest  sentences  as  to 
the  immorality  of  Chesterfield's  letters,  we  disagree  with  his 
styling  his  code  of  manners  the  manners  of  a  dancing-master. 
Chesterfield  was  in  himself  a  perfect  instance  of  what  he  calls 
les  manieres  nobles  •  and  this  even  Johnson  allowed. 

"  Talking  of  Chesterfield,"  Johnson  said,  "  his  manner  was 
exquisitely  elegant,  and  he  had  more  knowledge  than  I  ex- 
pected." Boswell :  "  Did  you  find,  sir,  his  conversation  to  be 
of  a  superior  sort  ?"  Johnson :  "  Sir,  in  the  conversation  which 


CHESTERFIELD'S  LETTEES  TO  HIS  SON.  225 

I  had  with  him,  I  had  the  best  right  to  superiority,  for  it  was 
upon  philology  and  literature." 

It  was  well  remarked  how  extraordinary  a  thing  it  was  that 
a  man  who  loved  his  son  so  entirely  should  do  all  he  could  to 
make  him  a  rascal.  And  Foote  even  contemplated  bringing 
on  the  stage  a  father  who  had  thus  tutored  his  son ;  and  intend- 
ed to  show  the  son  an  honest  man  in  every  thing  else,  but  prac- 
ticing his  father's  maxims  upon  him,  and  cheating  him. 

"  It  should  be  so  contrived,"  Johnson  remarked,  referring 
to  Foote's  plan,  "that  the  father  should  be  the  only  sufferer 
by  the  son's  villainy,  and  thus  there  would  be  poetical  justice." 
"Take  out  the  immorality,"  he  added,  on  another  occasion, 
"and  the  book  (Chesterfield's  Letters  to  his  Son)  should  be 
put  into  the  hands  of  every  young  gentleman." 

We  are  inclined  to  differ,  and  to  confess  to  a  moral  taint 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  Letters ;  and  even  had  the  immo- 
rality been  expunged,  the  false  motives,  the  deep,  invariable 
advocacy  of  principles  of  expediency  would  have  poisoned 
what  otherwise  might  be  of  effectual  benefit  to  the  minor  vir- 
tues of  polite  society. 

K  2 


THE  ABBE   SCARRON, 

THEEE  is  an  Indian  or  Chinese  legend,  I  forget  which,  from 
which  Mrs.  Shelley  may  have  taken  her  hideous  idea  of  Fran- 
kenstein. We  are  told  in  this  aUegory  that,  after  fashioning 
some  thousands  of  men  after  the  most  approved  model,  endow- 
ing them  with  all  that  is  noble,  generous,  admirable,  and  lova- 
ble in  man  or  woman,  the  eastern  Prometheus  grew  weary  in 
his  work,  stretched  his  hand  for  the  beer-can,  and  draining  it 
too  deeply,  lapsed  presently  into  a  state  of  what  Germans  call 
"  other-man-ness."  There  is  a  simpler  Anglo-Saxon  term  for 
this  condition,  but  I  spare  you.  The  eastern  Prometheus  went 
on  seriously  with  his  work,  and  still  produced  the  same  perfect 
models,  faultless  alike  in  brain  and  leg.  But  when  it  came  to 
the  delicate  finish,  when  the  last  touches  were  to  be  made,  his 
hand  shook  a  little,  and  the  more  delicate  members  went  awry. 
It  was  thus  that  instead  of  the  power  of  seeing  every  color 
properly,  one  man  came  out  with  a  pair  of  optics  which  turned 
every  thing  to  green,  and  this  verdancy  probably  transmitted 
itself  to  the  intelligence.  Another,  to  continue  the  allegory, 
whose  tympanum  had  slipped  a  little  under  the  unsteady  fin- 
gers of  the  man-maker,  heard  every  thing  in  a  wrong  sense, 
and  his  life  was  miserable,  because,  if  you  sang  his  praises,  he 
believed  you  were  ridiculing  him,  and  if  you  heaped  abuse 
upon  him,  he  thought  you  were  telling  lies  of  him. 

But  as  Prometheus  Orientalis  grew  more  jovial,  it  seems  to 
have  come  into  his  head  to  make  mistakes  on  purpose.  "  I'll 
have  a  friend  to  laugh  with,"  quoth  he ;  and  when  warned  by 
an  attendant  Yaksha,  or  demon,  that  men  who  laughed  one 
hour  often  wept  the  next,  he  swore  a  lusty  oath,  struck  his 
thumb  heavily  on  a  certain  bump  in  the  skull  he  was  complet- 
ing, and  holding  up  his  little  doll,  cried, "  Here  is  one  who  will 
laugh  at  every  thing!" 

I  must  now  add  what  the  legend  neglects  to  tell.  The 
model  laugher  succeeded  well  enough  in  his  own  reign,  but  he 
could  not  beget  a  large  family.  The  laughers  who  never  weep, 
the  real  clowns  of  life,  who  do  not,  when  the  curtain  drops, 
retire,  after  an  infinitesimal  allowance  of  "  cordial,"  to  a  half- 
starved,  complaining  family,  with  brats  that  cling  round  his 
parti-colored  stockings,  and  cry  to  him — not  for  jokes — but  for 


228  WHO   COMES    HEBE? 

bread,  these  laughers,  I  say,  are  few  and  far  between.  You 
should,  therefore,  be  doubly  grateful  to  me  for  introducing  to 
you  now  one  of  the  most  famous  of  them ;  one  who,  with  all 
right  and  title  to  be  lugubrious,  was  the  merriest  man  of  his  age. 

On  Shrove  Tuesday,  in  the  year  1638,  the  good  city  of  Mans 
was  in  a  state  of  great  excitement :  the  carnival  was  at  its 
height,  and  every  body  was  gone  mad  for  one  day  before  turn- 
ing pious  for  the  long,  dull  forty  days  of  Lent.  The  market- 
place was  filled  with  maskers  in  quaint  costumes,  each  wilder 
and  more  extravagant  than  the  last.  Here  were  magicians 
with  high  peaked  hats  covered  with  cabalistic  signs,  here  East- 
ern sultans  of  the  medieval  model,  with  very  fierce  looks  and 
very  large  cimeters :  here  Amadis  de  Gaul  with  a  wagging 
plume  a  yard  high,  here  Pantagruel,  here  harlequins,  here 
Huguenots  ten  times  more  lugubrious  than  the  despised  secta- 
ries they  mocked,  here  Csesar'and  Ponipey  in  trunk  hose  and 
Roman  helmets,  -and  a  mass  of  other  notabilities  who  were 
great  favorites  in  that  day,  appeared. 

But  who  comes  here?  What  is  the  meaning  of  these 
roars  of  laughter  that  greet  the  last  mask  who  runs  into  the 
market-place  ?  Why  do  all  the  women  and  children  hurry 
together,  calling  up  one  another,  and  shouting  with  delight  ? 
What  is  this  thing  ?  Is  it  some  new  species  of  bird  thus  cov- 
ered with  feathers  and  down  ?  In  a  few  minutes  the  little 
figure  is  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  boys  and  women,  who  be- 
gin to  pluck  him  of  his  borrowed  plumes,  while  he  chatters  to 
them  like  a  magpie,  whistles  like  a  song-bird,  croaks  like  a 
raven,  or  in  his  natural  character  showers  a  mass  of  funny 
nonsense  on  them,  till  their  laughter  makes  their  sides  ache. 
The  little  wretch  is  literally  covered  with  small  feathers  from 
head  to  foot,  and  even  his  face  is  not  to  be  recognized.  The 
women  pluck  him  behind  and  before ;  he  dances  round  and 
tries  to  evade  their  fingers.  This  is  impossible;  he  breaks 
away,  runs  down  the  market  pursued  by  a  shouting  crowd,  is 
again  surrounded,  and  again  subjected  to  a  plucking  process. 
The  bird  must  be  stripped ;  he  must  be  discovered.  Little  by 
little  his  back  is  bared,  and  little  by  little  is  seen  a  black  jerk- 
in, black  stockings,  and,  wonder  upon  wonder !  the  bands  of 
a  canon.  Now  they  have  cleared  his  face  of  its  plumage,  and 
a  cry  of  disgust  and  shame  hails  the  disclosure.  Yes,  this 
curious  masker  is  no  other  than  a  reverend  abbe,  a  young 
canon  of  the  cathedral  of  Mans !  "  This  is  too  much — it  is 
scandalous — it  is  disgraceful.  The  church  must  be  respected, 
the  sacred  order  must  not  descend  to  such  frivolities."  The 
people,  lately  laughing,  are  now  furious  at  the  shameless  abbe, 
and  not  his  liveliest  wit  can  save  him ;  they  threaten  and  cry 


A   MAD    FKEAK   AND   ITS   CONSEQUENCES.  229 

shame  on  him,  and  in  terror  of  his  life,  he  beats  his  way 
through  the  crowd,  and  takes  to  his  heels.  The  mob  follows 
hooting  and  savage.  The  little  man  is  nimble ;  those  well- 
shaped  legs — qui  ont  si  bien  danse — stand  him  in  good  stead. 
Down  the  streets,  and  out  of  the  town  go  hare  and  hounds. 
The  pursuers  gain  on  him — a  bridge,  a  stream  filled  with  tall 
reeds,  and  delightfully  miry,  are  all  the  hope  of  refuge  he  sees 
before  him.  He  leaps  gallantly  from  the  bridge  in  among  the 
osiers,  and  has  the  joy  of  listening  to  the  disappointed  curses 
of  the  mob,  when  reaching  the  stream  their  quarry  is  no- 
where to  be  seen.  The  reeds  conceal  him,  and  there  he  lin- 
gers till  nightfall,  when  he  can  issue  from  his  lurking-place 
and  escape  from  the  town. 

Such  was  the  mad  freak  which  deprived  the  Abbe  Scarron 
of  the  use  of  his  limbs  for  life.  His  health  was  already  ruined 
when  he  indulged  in  this  caprice;  the  damp  of  the  river  brought 
on  a  violent  attack,  which  closed  with  palsy,  and  the  gay  young 
abbe  had  to  pay  dearly  for  the  pleasure  of  astonishing  the  citi- 
zens of  Mans.  The  disguise  was  easily  accounted  for — he  had 
smeared  himself  with  honey,  ripped  open  a  feather-bed,  and 
rolled  himself  in  it. 

This  little  incident  gives  a  good  idea  of  what  Scarron  was 
in  his  younger  days — ready  at  any  time  for  any  wild  caprice. 

Paul  Scarron  was  the  son  of  a  Conseiller  du  Parlement  of 
good  family,  resident  in  Paris.  He  was  born  in  1610,  and  his 
early  days  would  have  been  wretched  enough,  if  his  elastic 
spirits  had  allowed  him  to  give  way  to  misery.  His  father 
was  a  good-natured,  weak-minded  man,  who  on  the  death  of 
his  first  wife  married  a  second,  who,  as  one  hen  will  peck  at 
another's  chicks,  would  not,  as  a  stepmother,  leave  the  little 
Paul  in  peace.  She  was  continually  putting  her  own  children 
forward,  and  ill  treating  the  late  "  anointed"  son.  The  father 
gave  in  too  readily,  and  young  Paul  was  glad  enough  to  be 
set  free  from  his  unhappy  home.  There  may  be  some  excuse 
in  this  for  the  licentious  living  to  which  he  now  gave  himself 
up.  He  was  heir  to  a  decent  fortune,  and  of  course  thought 
himself  justified  in  spending  it  beforehand.  Then,  in  spite  of 
his  quaint  little  figure,  he  had  something  attractive  about  him, 
for  his  merry  face  was  good-looking,  if  not  positively  hand- 
some. If  we  add  to  this,  spirits  as  buoyant  as  an  Irishman's 
— a  mind  that  not  only  saw  the  ridiculous  wherever  it  existed, 
but  could  turn  the  most  solemn  and  awful  themes  to  laughter, 
a  vast  deal  of  good-nature,  and  not  a  little  assurance — we  can 
understand  that  the  young  Scarron  was  a  favorite  with  both  men 
and  women,  and  among  the  reckless  pleasure-seekers  of  the  day 
soon  became  one  of  the  wildest.  In  short,  he  was  a  fast  young 


230  MAKING   AN   ABBE   OF   SCARRON. 

Parisian,  with  as  little  care  for  morality  or  religion  as  any 
youth  who  saunters  on  the  Boulevards  of  the  French  capital 
to  this  day. 

But  his  stepmother  was  not  content  with  getting  rid  of 
young  Paul,  but  had  her  eye  also  on  his  fortune,  and  therefore 
easily  persuaded  her  husband  that  the  service  of  the  church 
was  precisely  the  career  for  which  the  young  reprobate  was 
fitted.  There  was  an  uncle  who  was  Bishop  of  Grenoble,  and 
a  canonry  could  easily  be  got  for  him.  The  fast  youth  was 
compelled  to  give  into  this  arrangement,  but  declined  to  take 
full  orders ;  so  that  while  drawing  the  revenue  of  his  stall,  he 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  duties  of  his  calling.  Then,  too,  it 
was  rather  a  fashionable  thing  to  be  an  abbe,  especially  a  gay 
one.  The  position  placed  you  on  a  level  with  people  of  all  ranks. 
Half  the  court  was  composed  of  love-making  ecclesiastics,  and 
the  soutane  was  a  kind  of  diploma  for  wit  and  wickedness. 
Viewed  in  this  light,  the  church  was  as  jovial  a  profession  as 
the  army,  and  the  young  Scarron  went  to  the  full  extent  of  the 
letter  allowed  to  the  black  gown.  It  was  only  such  stupid 
superstitious  louts  as  those  of  Mans,  who  did  not  know  any 
thing  of  the  ways  of  Paris  life,  who  could  object  to  such  lit- 
tle freaks  as  he  loved  to  indulge  in. 

The  merry  little  abbe  was  soon  the  delight  of  the  Marais. 
This  distinct  and  antiquated  quarter  of  Paris  was  then  the 
May-fair  of  that  capital.  Here  lived  in  ease,  and  contempt  of 
the  bourgeoisie,  the  great,  the  gay,  the  courtier,  and  the  wit. 
Here  Marion  de  Lorme  received  old  cardinals  and  young 
abbes ;  here  were  the  salons  of  Madame  de  Martel,  of  the 
Comtesse  de  la  Suze,  who  changed  her  creed  in  order  to  avoid 
seeing  her  husband  in  this  world  or  the  next,  and  the  famous 
— or  infamous— Ninon  de  1'Enclos ;  and  at  these  houses  young 
Scarron  met  the  courtly  Saint-Evremond,  the  witty  Sarrazin, 
and  the  learned,  but  arrogant  Voiture.  Here  he  read  his  skits 
and  parodies,  here  travestied  Virgil,  made  epigrams  on  Riche- 
lieu, and  poured  out  his  indelicate  but  always  laughable  wit- 
ticisms. But  his  indulgences  were  not  confined  to  intrigues  ; 
he  also  drank  deep,  and  there  was  not  a  pleasure  within  his 
reach,  which  he  ever  thought  of  denying  himself.  He  laughed 
at  religion,  thought  morality  a  nuisance,  and  resolved  to  be 
merry  at  all  costs. 

The  little  account  was  brought  in  at  last.  At  the  age  of 
five-and-twenty  his  constitution  was  broken  up.  Gout  and 
rheumatism  assailed  him  alternately  or  in  leash.  He  began 
to  feel  the  annoyance  of  the  constraint  they  occasioned ;  he  re- 
gretted those  legs  which  had  figured  so  well  in  a  ronde  or  a 
minuet,  and  those  hands  which  had  played  the  lute  to  dames 


SCARRON'S  LAMENT  TO  PELLISSON.  231 

more  fair  than  modest ;  and,  to  add  to  this,  the  pain  he  suf- 
fered was  not  slight.  He  sought  relief  in  gay  society,  and 
was  cheerful  in  spite  of  his  sufferings.  At  length  came  the 
Shrove  Tuesday  and  the  feathers  ;  and  the  consequences  were 
terrible.  He  was  soon  a  prey  to  doctors,  whom  he  believed 
in  no  more  than  in  the  church  of  which  he  was  so  great  a  light. 
His  legs  were  no  longer  his  own,  so  he  was  obliged  to  borrow 
those  of  a  chair.  He  was  soon  tucked  down  into  a  species  of 
dumb-waiter  on  castors,  in  which  he  could  be  rolled  about  in  a 
party,  just  as  the  late  Lady  Charleville  was.  In  front  of  this 
chair  was  fastened  a  desk,  on  which  he  wrote;  for  too  wise 
to  be  overcome  by  his  agony,  he  drove  it  away  by  cultivating 
his  imagination,  and  in  this  way  some  of  the  most  fantastic 
productions  in  French  literature  were  composed  by  this  quaint 
little  abbe. 

Nor  was  sickness  his  only  trial  now.  Old  Scarron  was  a 
citizen,  and  had,  what  was  then  criminal,  sundry  ideas  of  the 
liberty  of  the  nation.  He  saw  with  disgust  the  tyranny  of 
Richelieu,  and  joined  a  party  in  the  Parliament  to  oppose  the 
cardinal's  measures.  He  even  had  the  courage  to  speak  open- 
ly against  one  of  the  court  edicts ;  and  the  pitiless  cardinal, 
who  never  overlooked  any  offense,  banished  him  to  Touraine, 
and  naturally  extended  his  animosity  to  the  conseiller's  son. 
This  happened  at  a  moment  at  which  the  cripple  believed  him- 
self to  be  on  the  road  to  favor.  He  had  already  won  that  of 
Madame  de  Hautefort,  on  whom  Louis  XIII.  had  set  his  affec- 
tions, and  this  lady  had  promised  to  present  him  to  Anne  of 
Austria.  The  father's  honest  boldness  put  a  stop  to  the  son's 
intended  servility,  and  Scarron  lamented  his  fate  in  a  letter  to 
Pellisson : 

"O  mille  ecus,  par  malheur  retranches, 

Que  vous  pouviez  m'epargner  de  peches ! 

Quand  un  valet  me  dit,  tremblant  et  have, 

Nous  n'avons  plus  de  buches  dans  la  cave  ^ 

Que  pour  aller  jusqu'a  demain  matin, 

Je  peste  alors  sur  mon  chien  de  destin, 

Sur  le  grand  froid,  sur  le  bois  de  la  greve, 

Qu'on  vend  si  cher,  et  qui  si-tot  s'acheve. 

Je  jure  alors,  et  meme  je  me'dis 

De  1'action  de  mon  pere  etourdi, 

Quand  sans  songer  a  ce  qu'il  allait  faire 

II  m'ebaucha  sous  un  astre  contraire, 

Et  m'acheva  par  un  discours  maudit 

Qu'il  fit  depuis  sur  un  certain  edit." 

The  father1  died  in  exile :  his  second  wife  had  spent  the 
greater  part  of  the  son's  fortune,  and  secured  the  rest  for  her 
own  children.  Scarron  was  left  with  a  mere  pittance,  and,  to 
complete  his  troubles,  was  involved  in  a  lawsuit  about  the  prop- 


232        THE  OFFICE  OF  THE  QUEEN'S  PATIENT. 

erty.  The  cripple,  with  his  usual  impudence,  resolved  to  plead 
his  own  cause,  and  did  it  only  too  well ;  he  made  the  judges 
laugh  so  loud  that  they  took  the  whole  thing  to  be  a  farce  on 
his  part,  and  gave — most  ungratefully — judgment  against  him. 

Glorious  days  were  those  for  the  penniless,  halcyon  days  for 
the  toady  and  the  sycophant.  There  was  still  much  of  the  old 
oriental  munificence  about  the  court,  and  sovereigns  like  Maz- 
arin  and  Louis  XIV.  granted  pensions  for  a  copy  of  flattering 
verses,  or  gave  away  places  as  the  reward  of  a  judicious  speech. 
Sinecures  were  legion,  yet  to  many  a  holder  they  were  no  sin- 
ecures at  all,  for  they  entailed  constant  servility  and  a  com- 
plete abdication  of  all  freedom  of  opinion. 

Scarron  was  nothing  more  than  a  merry  buifoon.  Many 
another  man  has  gained  a  name  for  his  mirth,  but  most  of 
them  have  been  at  least  independent.  Scarron  seems  to  have 
cared  for  nothing  that  was  honorable  or  dignified.  He  laugh- 
ed at  every  thing  but  money,  and  at  that  he  smiled,  though  it 
is  only  fair  to  say  that  he  was  never  avaricious,  but  only  cared 
for  ease  and  a  little  luxury. 

When  Richelieu  died,  and  the  gentler,  but  more  subtle 
Mazarin  mounted  his  throne,  Madame  de  Hautefort  made 
another  attempt  to  present  her  protege  to  the  queen,  and  this 
time  succeeded.  Anne  of  Austria  had  heard  of  the  quaint 
little  man  who  could  laugh  over  a  lawsuit  in  which  his  whole 
fortune  was  staked,  and  received  him  graciously.  He  begged 
for  some  place  to  support  him.  What  could  he  do?  What 
was  he  fit  for  ?  "  Nothing,  your  majesty,  but  the  important 
office  of  The  Queen's  Patient ;  for  that  I  am  fully  qualified." 
Anne  smiled,  and  Scarron  from  that  time  styled  himself  "  par 
la  grace  de  Dieu,  le  malade  de  la  Reine."  But  there  was  no 
stipend  attached  to  this  novel  office.  Mazarin  procured  him  a 
pension  of  500  crowns.  He  was  then  publishing  his  "Typhon, 
or  tjfce  Gigantomachy,"  and  dedicated  it  to  the  cardinal,  with 
an  adulatory  sonnet.  He  forwarded  the  great  man  a  splen- 
didly-bound copy,  which  was  accepted  with  nothing  more  than 
thanks.  In  a  rage  the  author  suppressed  the  sonnet  and  sub- 
stituted a  satire.  This  piece  was  bitterly  cutting,  and  terri- 
bly true.  It  galled  Mazarin  to  the  heart,  and  he  was  undig- 
nified enough  to  revenge  himself  by  canceling  the  poor  little 
pension  of  £60  per  annum  which  had  previously  been  granted 
to  the  writer.  Scarron  having  lost  his  pension,  soon  afterward 
asked  for  an  abbey,  but  was  refused.  "  Then  give  me,"  said 
he,  "  a  simple  benefice,  so  simple,  indeed,  that  all  its  duties  will 
be  comprised  in  believing  in  God."  But  Scarron  had  the  sat- 
isfaction of  gaining  a  great  name  among  the  cardinal's  many 
enemies,  and  with  none  more  so  than  De  Retz,  then  coadju- 


SCARRON'S  DESCRIPTION  OF  HIMSELF.  233 

teur*  to  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  and  already  deeply  implica- 
ted in  the  Fronde  movement.  To  insure  the  favor  of  this  ris- 
ing man,  Scarron  determined  to  dedicate  to  him  a  work  he  was 
just  about  to  publish,  and  on  which  he  justly  prided  himself 
as  by  far  his  best.  This  was  the  "  Roman  Comique,"  the  only 
one  of  his  productions  which  is  still  read.  That  it  should  be 
read,  I  can  quite  understand,  on  account  not  only  of  the  ease 
of  its  style,  but  of  the  ingenuity  of  its  improbable  plots,  the 
truth  of  the  characters,  and  the  charming  bits  of  satire  which 
are  found  here  and  there,  like  gems,  amid  a  mass  of  mere  fun. 
The  scene  is  laid  at  Mans,  the  town  in  which  the  author  had 
himself  perpetrated  his  chief  follies ;  and  many  of  the  charac- 
ters were  probably  drawn  from  life,  while  it  is  likely  enough 
that  some  of  the  stories  were  taken  from  facts  which  had  there 
come  to  his  knowledge.  As  in  many  of  the  romances  of  that 
age,  a  number  of  episodes  are  introduced  into  the  main  story, 
which  consists  of  the  adventures  of  a  strolling  company.  These 
are  mainly  amatory,  and  all  indelicate,  while  some  are  positive- 
ly dirty,  and  as  coarse  as  any  thing  in  French  literature.  Scar- 
ron had  little  of  the  clear  wit  of  Rabelais  to  atone  for  this  ;  but 
he  makes  up  for  it,  in  a  measure,  by  the  utter  absurdity  of  some 
of  his  incidents.  Not  the  least  curious  part  of  the  book  is  the 
Preface,  in  which  he  gives  a  description  of  himself,  in  order  to 
contradict,  as  he  affirms,  the  extravagant  reports  circulated 
about  him,  to  the  effect  that  he  was  set  upon  a  table  in  a  cage, 
or  that  his  hat  was  fastened  to  the  ceiling  by  a  pulley,  that  he 
might  "pluck  it  up  or  let  it  down,  to  do  compliment  to  a  friend, 
who  honored  him  with  a  visit."  This  description  is  a  tolera- 
ble specimen  of  his  style,  and  we  give  it  in  the  quaint  language 
of  an  old  translation,  published  in  1741 : 

"  I  am  past  thirty,  as  thou  may'st  see  by  the  back  of  my 
Chair.  If  I  live  to  be  forty,  I  shall  add  the  Lord  knows  how 
many  Misfortunes  to  those  I  have  already  suffered  for  tljese 
eight  or  nine  Years  last  past.  There  was  a  Time  when  my 
Stature  was  not  to  be  found  Fault  with,  tho'  now  'tis  of  the 
smallest.  My  Sickness  has  taken  me  shorter  by  a  Foot.  My 
Head  is  somewhat  too  big,  considering  my  Height ;  and  my 
Face  is  full  enough,  in  all  Conscience,  for  one  that  carries  such 
a  Skeleton  of  a  Body  about  him.  I  have  Hair  enough  on  my 
Head  not  to  stand  in  need  of  a  Peruke ;  and  'tis  gray,  too,  in 
spight  of  the  Proverb.  My  Sight  is  good  enough,  tho'  iny 
Eyes  are  large ;  they  are  of  a  blue  Color,  and  one  of  them  is 
sunk  deeper  into  my  Head  than  the  other,  which  was  occa- 
sion'd  by  my  leaning  on  that  Side.  My  Nose  is  well  enough 
mounted.  My  Teeth,  which  in  the  Days  of  Yore  look'd  like 
*  Coadjuteur. — A  high  office  in  the  Church  of  Rome. 


234  IMPROVIDENCE   AND   SERVILITY. 

a  Row  of  square  Pearl,  are  now  of  an  Ashen  Color ;  and  in  a 
few  Years  more,  will  have  the  Complexion  of  a  Small  -  coal 
Man's  Saturday  Shirt.  I  have  lost  one  Tooth  and  a  half  on 
the  left  Side,  and  two  and  a  half  precisely  on  the  right ;  and  I 
have  two  more  that  stand  somewhat  out  of  their  Ranks.  My 
Legs  and  Thighs,  in  the  first  place,  compose  an  obtuse  Angle, 
then  a  right  one,  and  lastly  an  acute.  My  Thighs  and  Body 
make  another;  and  my  Head,  leaning  perpetually  over  my 
Belly,  I  fancy  makes  me  not  very  unlike  the  Letter  Z.  My 
Arms  are  shortened,  as  well  as  my  Legs ;  and  my  Fingers  as 
well  as  my  Arms.  In  short,  I  am  a  living  Epitome  of  human 
Misery.  This,  as  near  as  I  can  give  it,  is  my  Shape.  Since  I 
am  got  so  far,  I  will  e'en  tell  thee  something  of  my  Humor. 
Under  the  Rose,  be  it  spoken,  Courteous  Reader,  I  do  this 
only  to  swell  the  Bulk  of  my  Book,  at  the  Request  of  the 
Bookseller — the  poor  Dog,  it  seems,  being  afraid  he  should  be 
a  Loser  by  this  Impression,  if  he  did  not  give  Buyer  enough 
for  his  Money." 

This  allusion  to  the  publisher  reminds  us  that,  on  the  sup- 
pression of  his  pension — on  hearing  of  which  Scarron  only  said, 
"  I  should  like,  then,  to  suppress  myself" — he  had  to  live  on 
the  profits  of  his  works.  In  later  days  it  was  Madame  Scar- 
ron herself  who  often  carried  them  to  the  bookseller's,  when 
there  was  not  a  penny  in  the  house.  The  publisher  was  Qui- 
net,  and  the  merry  wit,  when  asked  whence  he  drew  his  in- 
come, used  to  reply  with  mock  haughtiness,  "  De  mon  Mar- 
quisat  de  Quinet."  His  comedies,  which  have  been  described 
as  mere  burlesques — I  confess  I  have  never  read  them,  and 
hope  to  be  absolved — were  successful  enough,  and  if  Scarron 
had  known  how  to  keep  what  he  made,  he  might  sooner  or 
later  have  been  in  easy  circumstances.  He  knew  neither  that 
nor  any  other  art  of  self-restraint,  and,  therefore,  was  in  per- 
petual vicissitudes  of  riches  and  penury.  At  one  time  he  could 
afford  to  dedicate  a  piece  to  his  sister's  greyhound,  at  another 
he  was  servile  in  his  address  to  some  prince  or  duke. 

In  the  latter  spirit,  he  humbled  himself  before  Mazarin,  in 
spite  of  the  publication  of  his  "  Mazarinade,"  and  was,  as  he 
might  have  expected,  repulsed.  He  then  turned  to  Fouquet, 
the  new  Surintendant  de  Finances,  who  was  liberal  enough 
with  the  public  money,  which  he  so  freely  embezzled,  and  ex- 
tracted from  him  a  pension  of  1600  francs  (about  £64).  In 
one  way  or  another,  he  got  back  a  part  of  the  property  his 
stepmother  had  alienated  from  him,  and  obtained  a  prebend  in 
the  diocese  of  Mans,  which  made  up  his  income  to  something 
more  respectable. 

He  was  now  able  to  indulge  to  the  utmost  his  love  of  soci- 


235 

ety.  In  his  apartment,  in  the  Rue  St.  Louis,  he  received  all 
the  leaders  of  the  Fronde,  headed  by  De  Retz,  and  bringing 
with  them  their  pasquinades  on  Mazarin,  which  the  easy  Italian 
read  and  laughed  at  and  pretended  to  heed  not  at  all.  Poli- 
tics, however,  was  not  the  staple  of  the  conversation  at  Scar- 
ron's.  He  was  visited  as  a  curiosity,  as  a  clever  buffoon,  and 
those  who  came  to  see,  remained  to  laugh.  He  kept  them  all 
alive  by  his  coarse,  easy,  impudent  wit ;  in  which  there  was 
more  vulgarity  and  dirtiness  than  ill-nature.  He  had  a  fund 
of  bonhommie,  which  set  his  visitors  at  their  ease,  for  no  one 
was  afraid  of  being  bitten  by  the  chained  dog  they  came  to 
pat.  His  salon  became  famous  ;  and  the  admission  to  it  was  a 
diploma  of  wit.  He  kept  out  all  the  dull,  and  ignored  all  the 
simply  great.  Any  man  who  could  say  a  good  thing,  tell  a 
good  story,  write  a  good  lampoon,  or  mimic  a  fool,  was  a  wel- 
come guest.  Wits  mingled  with  pedants,  courtiers  with  poets. 
Abbes  and  gay  women  were  at  home  in  the  easy  society  of 
the  cripple,  and  circulated  freely  round  his  dumb-waiter. 

The  ladies  of  the  party  were  not  the  most  respectable  in 
Paris,  yet  some  who  were  models  of  virtue  met  there,  without 
a  shudder,  many  others  who  were  patterns  of  vice.  Ninon  de 
1'Enclos — then  young — though  age  made  no  alteration  in  her 
— and  already  slaying  her  scores,  and  ruining  her  hundreds  of 
admirers,  there  met  Madame  de  Sevigne,  the  most  respectable, 
as  well  as  the  most  agreeable,  woman  of  that  age.  Mademoi- 
selle de  Scudery,  leaving,  for  the  time,  her  twelve-volume  ro- 
mance, about  Cyrus  and  Ibrahim,  led  on  a  troop  of  Moliere's 
Precieuses  Ridicules,  and  here  recited  her  verses,  and  talked 
pedantically  to  Pellisson,  the  ugliest  man  in  Paris,  of  whom 
Boileau  wrote : 

"L'or  meme  &  Pellisson  donne  un  teint  de  beaute'." 

Then  there  was  Madame  de  la  Sabliere,  who  was  as  masculine 
as  her  husband  the  marquis  was  effeminate ;  the  Duchesse  de 
Lesdiguieres,  who  was  so  anxious  to  be  thought  a  wit  that  she 
employed  the  Chevalier  de  Mere  to  make  her  one;  and  the 
Comtesse  de  la  Suze,  a  clever  but  foolish  woman. 

The  men  were  poets,  courtiers,  and  pedants.  Menage  with 
his  tiresome  memory,  Montreuil  and  Marigni  the  song-writers, 
the  elegant  De  Grammont,  Turenne,  Coligni,  the  gallant  Abbe 
Tetu,  and  many  another  celebrity,*  thronged  the  rooms  where 
Scarron  sat  in  his  curious  wheelbarrow. 

The  conversation  was  decidedly  light ;  often,  indeed,  ob- 
scene, in  spite  of  the  presence  of  ladies ;  but  always  witty. 
The  hostility  of  Scarron  to  the  reigning  cardinal  was  a  great 
recommendation,  and  when  all  else  flagged,  or  the  cripple  had 


236  PKANCOISE  D'AUBIGJSTE'S  DEBUT. 

an  unusually  sharp  attack,  he  had  but  to  start  with  a  line  of 
his  "  Mazarinade,"  and  out  came  a  fresh  lampoon,  a  new  cari- 
cature, or  fresh  rounds  of  wit  fired  off  at  the  Italian,  from  the 
well-filled  cartridge-boxes  of  the  guests,  many  of  whom  kept 
their  mots  ready  made  up  for  discharge. 

But  a  change  came  over  the  spirit  of  the  paralytic's  dream. 
In  the  Rue  St.  Louis,  close  to  Scarron's,  lived  a  certain  Mad- 
ame Neuillant,  who  visited  him  as  a  neighbor,  and  one  day 
excited  his  curiosity  by  the  romantic  history  of  a  mother  and 
daughter,  who  had  long  lived  in  Martinique,  who  had  been 
ruined  by  the  extravagance  and  follies  of  a  reprobate  husband 
and  father;  and  were  now  living  in  great  poverty — the  daugh- 
ter being  supported  by  Madame  de  Neuillant  herself.  The 
good-natured  cripple  was  touched  by  this  story,  and  begged 
his  neighbor  to  bring  the  unhappy  ladies  to  one  of  his  parties. 
The  evening  came ;  the  abbe  was,  as  usual,  surrounded  by  a 
circle  of  lady-wits,  dressed  in  the  last  fashions,  flaunting  their 
fans,  and  laughing  merrily  at  his  sallies.  Madame  de  Neuil- 
lant was  announced,  and  entered,  followed  by  a  simply-dressed 
lady,  with  the  melancholy  face  of  one  broken  down  by  misfor- 
tunes, and  a  pretty  girl  of  fifteen.  The  contrast  between  the 
new-comers  and  the  fashionable  habituees  around  him  at  once 
struck  the  abbe.  The  girl  was  not  only  badly,  but  even  shab- 
bily dressed,  and  the  shortness  of  her  gown  showed  that  she 
had  grown  out  of  it,  and  could  not  afford  a  new  one.  The 
grandes  dames  turned  upon  her  their  eye-glasses,  and  whis- 
pered comments  behind  their  fans.  She  was  very  pretty,  they 
said,  very  interesting,  elegant,  lady-like,  and  so  on ;  but,  par- 
bleu  !  how  shamefully  mal  mise  !  The  new-comers  were  led 
up  to  the  cripple's  dumb-waiter,  and  the  grandes  dames  drew 
back  their  ample  petticoats  as  they  passed.  The  young  girl 
was  overcome  with  shame ;  their  whispers  reached  her ;  she 
cast  down  her  pretty  eyes,  and  growing  more  and  more  con- 
fused, she  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and  burst  into  tears.  The 
abbe  and  his  guests  were  touched  by  her  shyness,  and  endeav- 
ored to  restore  her  confidence.  Scarron  himself  leaned  over, 
and  whispered  a  few  kind  words  in  her  ear ;  then  breaking 
out  into  some  happy  pleasantry,  he  gave  her  time  to  recover 
her  composure.  Such  was  the  first  debut,  in  Parisian  society, 
of  Francoise  d'Aubigne,  who  was  destined,  as  Madame  Scar- 
ron, to  be  afterward  one  of  its  leaders,  and,  as  Madame  de 
Maintenon,  to  be  its  ruler. 

Some  people  are  cursed  with  bad  sons — some  with  erring 
daughters.  Francoise  d'Aubigne  was  long  the  victim  of  a 
wicked  father.  Constans  d'Aubigne  belonged  to  an  old  and 
honorable  family,  and  was  the  son  of  that  famous  old  Hugue- 


THE  SAD  STORY  OF  LA  BELLE  INDIENNE.        239 

not  general,  Theodore-Agrippa  d'Aubigne,  who  fought  for  a 
long  time  under  Henry  of  Navarre,  and  in  his  old  age  wrote 
the  history  of  his  times.  To  counterbalance  this  distinction, 
the  son  Constans  brought  all  the  discredit  he  could  on  the 
family.  After  a  reckless  life,  in  which  he  squandered  his  patri- 
mony, he  married  a  rich  widow,  and  then,  it  is  said,  contrived 
to  put  her  out  of  the  way.  He  was  imprisoned  as  a  murderer, 
but  acquitted  for  want  of  evidence.  The  story  goes,  that  he 
was  liberated  by  the  daughter  of  the  governor  of  the  jail, 
whom  he  had  seduced  in  the  prison,  and  whom  he  married 
when  free.  He  sought  to  retrieve  his  fortune  in  the  island  of 
Martinique,  ill-treated  his  wife,  and  eventually  ran  away  and 
left  her  and  her  children  to  their  fate.  They  followed  him  to 
France,  and  found  him  again  incarcerated.  Madame  d'Aubigne 
was  foolishly  fond  of  her  good-for-nothing  spouse,  and  lived 
with  him  in  his  cell,  where  the  little  Fran9oise,  who  had  been 
born  in  prison,  was  now  educated. 

Rescued  from  starvation  by  a  worthy  Huguenot  aunt,  Mad- 
ame de  Villette,  the  little  girl  was  brought  up  as  a  Protest- 
ant, and  a  very  stanch  one  she  proved  for  a  time.  But  Mad- 
ame d'Aubigne,  who  was  a  Romanist,  would  not  allow  her 
to  remain  long  under  the  Calvinistic  lady's  protection,  and 
sent  her  to  be  converted  by  her  godmother,  the  Madame  de 
Neuillant  above  mentioned.  This  woman,  who  was  as  merci- 
less as  a  woman  can  be,  literally  broke  her  into  Romanism, 
treated  her  like  a  servant,  made  her  groom  the  horses,  and 
comb  the  maid's  hair,  and  when  all  these  efforts  failed,  sent 
her  to  a  convent  to  be  finished  off.  The  nuns  did  by  specious 
reasoning  what  had  been  begun  by  persecution,  and  young 
Franchise,  at  the  time  she  was  introduced  to  Scarron,  was  a 
highly  respectable  member  of  "  the  only  true  church." 

Madame  d'Aubigne  was  at  this  time  supporting  herself  by 
needle- work.  Her  sad  story  won  the  sympathy  of  Scarron's 
guests,  who  united  to  relieve  her  wants.  La  belle  Indienne, 
as  the  cripple  styled  her,  soon  became  a  favorite  at  his  parties, 
and  lost  her  shyness  by  degrees.  Ninon  de  1'Enclos,  who  did 
not  want  heart,  took  her  by  the  hand,  and  a  friendship  thus 
commenced  between  that  inveterate  Lais  and  the  future  wife 
of  Louis  XIV.  which  lasted  till  death. 

The  beauty  of  Fran<?oise  soon  brought  her  many  admirers, 
among  whom  was  even  one  of  Ninon's  slaves ;  but  as  mar- 
riage was  not  the  object  of  these  attentions,  and  the  young 
girl  would  not  relinquish  her  virtue,  she  remained  for  some 
time  unmarried,  but  respectable.  Scarron  was  particularly 
fond  of  her,  and  well  knew  that,  portionless  as  she  was,  the 
poor  girl  would  have  but  little  chance  of  making  a  match. 


240  MATRIMONIAL   CONSIDERATIONS. 

His  kindness  touched  her,  his  wit  charmed  her ;  she  pitied  his 
infirmities,  and,  as  his  neighbor,  frequently  saw  and  tried  to 
console  him.  On  the  other  hand  the  cripple,  though  forty 
years  old,  and  in  a  state  of  health  which  it  is  impossible  to  de- 
scribe, fell  positively  in  love  with  the  young  girl,  who  alone  of 
all  the  ladies  who  visited  him  combined  wit  with  perfect  mod- 
esty. He  pitied  her  destitution.  There  was  mutual  pity,  and 
we  all  know  what  passion  that  feeling  is  akin  to. 

Still,  for  a  paralytic,  utterly  unfit  for  marriage  in  any  point 
of  view,  to  offer  to  a  beautiful  young  girl,  would  have  seemed 
ridiculous,  if  not  unpardonable.  But  let  us  take  into  account 
the  difference  in  ideas  of  matrimony  between  ourselves  and  the 
French.  We  must  remember  that  marriage  has  always  been 
regarded  among  our  neighbors  as  a  contract  for  mutual  bene- 
fit, into  which  the  consideration  of  money  of  necessity  entered 
largely.  It  is  true  that  some  qualities  are  taken  as  equivalents 
for  actual  cash :  thus,  if  a  young  man  has  a  straight  and  well- 
cut  nose,  he  may  sell  himself  at  a  higher  price  than  young 
"Lefevre  there  with  the  hideous  pug;  if  a  girl  is  beautiful, 
the  marquis  will  be  content  with  some  thousands  of  francs  less 
for  her  dower  than  if  her  hair  were  red  or  her  complexion 
irreclaimably  brown.  If  Julie  has  a  pretty  foot,  a  svelte  waist, 
and  can  play  the  piano  thunderingly,  or  sing  in  the  charming- 
est  soprano,  her  ten  thousand  francs  are  quite  as  acceptable 
as  those  of  stout,  awkward,  glum-faced  Jeannette.  The  fault- 
less boots  and  yellow  kids  of  young  Adolphe  counterbalance 
the  somewhat  apocryphal  vicomte  of  ill-kempt  and  ill-attired 
Henri. 

But  then  there  must  be  some  fortune.  A  Frenchman  is  so 
much  in  the  habit  of  expecting  it,  that  he  thinks  it  almost  a 
crime  to  fall  in  love  where  there  is  none.  Fran^oise,  pretty, 
clever,  agreeable  as  she  was,  was  penniless,  and  even  worse, 
she  was  the  daughter  of  a  man  who  had  been  imprisoned  on 
suspicion  of  murder,  and  a  woman  who  had  gained  her  liveli- 
hood by  needle-work.  All  these  considerations  made  the  fancy 
of  the  merry  abbe  less  ridiculous,  and  Frangoise  herself  being 
sufficiently  versed  in  the  ways  of  the  world  to  understand  the 
disadvantage  under  which  she  labored,  was  less  amazed  and 
disgusted  than  another  girl  might  have  been,  when,  in  due 
course,  the  cripple  offered  her  himself  and  his  dumb-waiter. 
He  had  little  more  to  give — his  pension,  a  tiny  income  from 
his  prebend  and  his  Marquisat  de  Quinet. 

The  offer  of  the  little  man  was  not  so  amusing  as  other  epi- 
sodes of  his  life.  He  went  honestly  to  work  ;  represented  to 
her  what  a  sad  lot  would  hers  be,  if  Madame  de  Neuillant 
died,  and  what  were  the  temptations  of  beauty  without  a  pen- 


"SCARRON'S  WIFE  WILL  LIVE  FOREVER."  241 

ny.  His  arguments  were  more  to  the  point  than  delicate,  and 
he  talked  to  the  young  girl  as  if  she  was  a  woman  of  the  world. 
Still,  she  accepted  him,  cripple  as  he  was. 

Madame  de  Neuillant  made  no  objection,  for  she  was  only 
too  glad  to  be  rid  of  a  beauty  who  ate  and  drank,  but  did  not 
marry. 

On  the  making  of  the  contract,  Scarron's  fun  revived.  When 
asked  by  the  notary  what  was  the  young  lady's  fortune,  he 
replied :  "  Four  louis,  two  large  wicked  eyes,  one  fine  figure, 
one  pair  of  good  hands,  and  lots  of  mind."  "  And  what  do 
you  give  her  ?"  asked  the  lawyer.  "  Immortality,"  replied  he, 
with  the  air  of  a  bombastic  poet.  "  The  names  of  the  wives 
of  kings  die  with  them — that  of  Scarron's  wife  will  live  for- 
ever !" 

His  marriage  obliged  him  to  give  up  his  canonry,  which  he 
sold  to  Menage's  man-servant,  a  little  bit  of  simony  which 
was  not  even  noticed  in  those  days.  It  is  amusing  to  find  a 
man  who  laughed  at  all  religion,  insisting  that  his'wife  should 
make  a  formal  avowal  of  the  Romish  faith.  Of  the  character 
of  this  marriage  we  need  say  no  more  than  that  Scarron  had 
at  that  time  the  use  of  no  more  than  his  eyes,  tongue,  and 
hands.  Yet  such  was  then,  as  now,  the  idea  of  matrimony 
in  France,  that  the  young  lady's  friends  considered  her  for- 
tunate. 

Scarron  in  love  was  a  picture  which  amazed  and  amused  the 
whole  society  of  Paris,  but  Scarron  married  was  still  more 
curious.  The  queen,  when  she  heard  of  it,  said  that  Francoise 
would  be  nothing  but  a  useless  bit  of  furniture  in  his  house. 
She  proved  not  only  the  most  useful  appendage  he  could  have, 
but  the  salvation  alike  of  his  soul  and  his  reputation.  The 
woman  who  charmed  Louis  XIV.  by  her  good  sense,  had 
enough  of  it  to  see  Scarron's  faults,  and  prided  herself  on  re- 
forming him  as  far  as  it  was  possible.  Her  husband  had 
hitherto  been  the  great  Nestor  of  indelicacy,  and  when  he 
was  induced  to  give  it  up,  the  rest  followed  his  example. 
Madame  Scarron  checked  the  license  of  the  abbe's  conversa- 
tion, and  even  worked  a  beneficial  change  in  his  mind. 

The  joviality  of  their  parties  still  continued.  Scarron  had 
always  been  famous  for  his  petits  soupers,  the  fashion  of  which 
he  introduced,  but  as  his  poverty  would  not  allow  him  to  give 
them  in  proper  style,  his  friends  made  a  picnic  of  it,  and  each 
one  either  brought  or  sent  his  own  dish  of  ragout,  or  whatever 
it  might  be,  and  his  own  bottle  of  wine.  This  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  the  case  after  the  marriage,  however ;  for  it  is 
related  as  a  proof  of  Madame  Scarron's  conversational  powers, 
that,  when  one  evening  a  poorer  supper  than  usual  was  served, 


242 

the  waiter  whispered  in  her  ear,  "Tell  them  another  story, 
Madame,  if  you  please,  for  we  have  no  joint  to-night."  Still 
both  guests  and  host  could  well  afford  to  dispense  with  the 
coarseness  of  the  cripple's  talk,  which  might  raise  a  laugh,  but 
must  sometimes  have  caused  disgust,  and  the  young  wife  of 
sixteen  succeeded  in  making  him  purer  both  in  his  conversa- 
tion and  his  writings. 

The  household  she  entered  was  indeed  a  villainous  one. 
Scarron  rather  gloried  in  his  early  delinquencies,  and,  to  add 
to  this,  his  two  sisters  had  characters  far  from  estimable.  One 
of  them  had  been  maid  of  honor  to  the  Princesse  de  Conti,  but 
had  given  up  her  appointment  to  become  the  mistress  of  the 
Due  de  Tremes.  The  laugher  laughed  even  at  his  sister's  dis- 
honor, and  allowed  her  to  live  in  the  same  house  on  a  higher 
ctage.  When,  on  one  occasion,  some  one  called  on  him  to  so- 
licit the  lady's  interest  with  the  duke,  he  coolly  said,  "  You 
are  mistaken  ;  it  is  not  I  who  know  the  duke ;  go  up  to  the 
next  story."  The  offspring  of  this  connection  he  styled  "  his 
nephews  after  the  fashion  of  the  Marais."  Franpoise  did  her 
best  to  reclaim  this  sister  and  to  conceal  her  shame,  but  the 
laughing  abbe  made  no  secret  of  it. 

But  the  laugher  was  approaching  his  end.  His  attacks 
became  more  and  more  violent:  still  he  laughed  at  them. 
Once  he  was  seized  with  a  terrible  choking  hiccough,  which 
threatened  to  suffocate  him.  The  first  moment  he  could  speak 
he  cried,  "If  I  get  well,  I'll  write  a  satire  on  the  hiccough." 
The  priests  came  about  him,  and  his  wife  did  what  she  could 
to  bring  him  to  a  sense  of  his  future  danger.  He  laughed  at 
the  priests  and  at  his  wife's  fears.  She  spoke  of  hell.  "  If 
there  is  such  a  place,"  he  answered,  "  it  won't  be  for  me,  for 
without  you  I  must  have  had  my  hell  in  this  life."  The  priest 
told  him,  by  way  of  consolation,  that  "  God  had  visited  him 
more  than  any  man."  "  He  does  me  too  much  honor,"  an- 
swered the  mocker.  "You  should  give  him  thanks,"  urged 
the  ecclesiastic.  "  I  can't  see  for  what,"  was  the  shameless 
answer. 

On  his  death-bed  he  parodied  a  will,  leaving  to  Corneille 
"  two  hundred  pounds  of  patience ;  to  Boileau  (with  whom 
he  had  a  long  feud),  the  gangrene ;  and  to  the  Academy,  the 
power  to  alter  the  French  language  as  they  liked."  His  leg- 
acy in  verse  to  his  wife  is  grossly  disgusting,  and  quite  unfit 
for  quotation.  Yet  he  loved  her  well,  avowed  that  his  chief 
grief  in  dying  was  the  necessity  of  leaving  her,  and  begged 
her  to  remember  him  sometimes,  and  to  lead  a  virtuous  life. 

His  last  moments  were  as  jovial  as  any.  When  he  saw 
his  friends  weeping  around  him  he  shook  his  head  and  cried, 


A   LESSON   FOR   GAY   AND   GKAVE.  243 

"  I  shall  never  make  you  weep  as  much  as  I  have  made  you 
laugh."  A  little  later  a  softer  thought  of  hope  came  across 
him.  "  No  more  sleeplessness,  no  more  gout,"  he  murmured  ; 
"the  Queen's  patient  will  be  well  at  last."  At  length  the 
laugher  was  sobered.  In  the  presence  of  death,  at  the  gates 
of  a  new  world,  he  muttered,  half  afraid,  "  I  never  thought  it 
was  so  easy  to  laugh  at  death,"  and  so  expired.  This  was  in 
October,  1660,  when  the  cripple  had  reached  the  age  of  fifty. 
Thus  died  a  laugher.  It  is  unnecessary  here  to  trace  the 
story  of  his  widow's  strange  rise  to  be  the  wife  of  a  king. 
Scarron  was  no  honor  to  her,  and  in  later  years  she  tried  to 
forget  his  existence.  Boileau  fell  into  disgrace  for  merely 
mentioning  his  name  before  the  king.  Yet  Scarron  was  in 
many  respects  a  better  man  than  Louis ;  and,  laugher  as  he 
was,  he  had  a  good  heart.  There  is  a  time  for  mirth  and  a 
time  for  mourning,  the  Preacher  tells  us.  Scarron  never  learn- 
ed this  truth,  and  he  laughed  too  much  and  too  long.  Yet  let 
us  not  end  the  laugher's  life  in  sorrow : 

"It  is  well  to  be  merry  and  wise," etc. 

Let  us  be  merry  as  the  poor  cripple,  who  bore  his  sufferings 
so  well,  and  let  us  be  wise  too.  There  is  a  lesson  for  gay  and 
grave  in  the  life  of  Scarron,  the  laugher. 


FRANCOIS,  DUC  DE  LA  ROCHEFOUCAULT,  AND  THE 
DUC  DE  SAINT-SIMON, 

THE  precursor  of  Saint-Simon,  the  model  of  Lord  Chester- 
field, this  ornament  of  his  age  belonged,  as  well  as  Saint- 
Simon,  to  that  state  of  society  in  France  which  was  character- 
ized— as  Lord  John  Russell,  in  his  "  Memoirs  of  the  Duchess 
of  Orleans,"  tells  us  —  by  an  idolatry  of  power  and  station. 
"  God  would  not  condemn  a  person  of  that  rank,"  was  the  ex- 
clamation of  a  lady  of  the  old  regime,  on  hearing  that  a  noto- 
rious sinner,  "  Pair  de  France,"  and  one  knows  not  what  else, 
had  gone  to  his  account  impenitent  and  unabsolved;  and 
though  the  sentiment  may  strike  us  as  profane,  it  was,  doubt- 
less, genuine. 

Rank,  however,  was  often  adorned  by  accomplishments 
which;  like  an  exemption  from  rules  of  conduct,  it  almost 
claimed  as  a  privilege.  Good -breeding  was  a  science  in 
France;  natural  to  a  peasant,  even,  it  was  studied  as  an 
epitome  of  all  the  social  virtues.  "  N^etre  pas  poll"  was  the 
sum  total  of  all  dispraise :  a  man  could  only  recover  from  it 
by  splendid  valor  or  rare  gifts ;  a  woman  could  not  hope  to 
rise  out  of  that  Slough  of  Despond  to  which  good-breeding 
never  came.  We  were  behind  all  the  arts  of  civilization  in 
England,  as  Francois  de  Rochefoucault  (we  give  the  orthog- 
raphy of  the  present  day)  was  in  his  cradle.  This  brilliant 
personage,  who  combined  the  wit  and  the  moralist,  the  court- 
ier and  the  soldier,  the  man  of  literary  tastes  and  the  senti- 
mentalist par  excellence,  was  born  in  1613.  In  addition  to  his 
hereditary  title  of  due,  he  had  the  empty  honor,  as  Saint-Si- 
mon calls  it,  of  being  Prince  de  Marsillac,  a  designation  which 
was  lost  in  that  of  De  la  Rochefoucault — so  famous  even  to 
the  present  day.  As  he  presented  himself  at  the  court  of  the 
regency,  over  which  Anne  of  Austria  nominally  presided,  no 
youth  there  was  more  distinguished  for  his  elegance  or  for 
the  fame  of  his  exploits  during  the  wars  of  the  Fronde  than 
this  youthful  scion  of  an  illustrious  house.  Endowed  by  na- 
ture with  a  pleasing  countenance,  and,  what  was  far  more  im- 
portant in  that  fastidious  region,  an  air  of  dignity,  he  display- 
ed wonderful  contradictions  in  his  character  and  bearing.  He 
had,  says  Madame  de  Maintenon,  "  beaucoup  d1  esprit,  et  peu 
de  savoir;"  an  expressive  phrase.  "He  was,"  she  adds,  "pli- 


246  THE   HOTEL  DE   ROCHEFOUCAULT. 

ant  in  nature,  intriguing,  and  cautious ;"  nevertheless  she  nev- 
er, she  declares,  possessed  a  more  steady  friend,  nor  one  more 
confiding  and  better  adapted  to  advise.  Brave  as  he  was,  he 
held  personal  valor,  or  affected  to  do  so,  in  light  estimation. 
His  ambition  was  to  rule  others.  Lively  in  conversation, 
though  naturally  pensive,  he  assembled  around  him  all  that 
Paris  or  Versailles  could  present  of  wit  and  intellect. 

The  old  HStel  de  Rochefoucault,  in  the  Rue  de  Seine,  in 
the  Faubourg  St.  Germain,  in  Paris,  still  grandly  recalls  the 
assemblies  in  which  Racine,  Boileau,  Madame  de  Se'vigne,  the 
La  Fayettes,  and  the  famous  Duchesse  de  Longueville,  used 
to  assemble.  The  time-honored  family  of  De  la  Rochefoucault 
still  preside  there ;  though  one  of  its  fairest  ornaments,  the 
young,  lovely,  and  pious  Duchesse  de  la  Rochefoucault  of  our 
time,  died  in  1852 — one  of  the  first  known  victims  to  diphthe- 
ria in  France,  in  that  unchanged  old  locality.  There,  where 
the  De  Longuevilles,  the  Mazarins,  and  those  who  had  formed 
the  famous  council  of  state  of  Anne  of  Austria  had  disappear- 
ed, the  poets  and  wits  who  gave  to  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.  its 
true  brilliancy,  collected  around  the  Due  de  la  Rochefoucault. 
What  a  scene  it  must  have  been,  in  those  days  when,  as  Buf- 
fon  said  of  the  earth  in  spring,  "  tout  fourmille  de  vie!'1''  Let 
us  people  the  salon  of  the  Hotel  de  Rochefoucault  with  visions 
of  the  past ;  see  the  host  there,  in  his  chair,  a  martyr  to  the 
gout,  which  he  bore  with  all  the  cheerfulness  of  a  Frenchman, 
and  picture  to  ourselves  the  great  men  who  were  handing  him 
his  cushion,  or  standing  near  his  fauteuil. 

Racine's  joyous  face  may  be  imagined  as  he  comes  in  fresh 
from  the  College  of  Harcourt.  Since  he  was  born  in  1639,  he 
had  not  arrived  at  his  zenith  till  La  Rochefoucault  was  almost 
past  his  prime.  For  a  man  at  thirty-six  in  France  can  no  lon- 
ger talk  prospectively  of  the  departure  of  youth ;  it  is  gone. 
A  single  man  of  thirty,  even  in  Paris,  is  "  un  vieux  gar$on :" 
life  begins  too  soon  and  ends  too  soon  with  those  pleasant 
sinners,  the  French.  And  Racine,  when  he  was  first  routed 
out  of  Port  Royal,  where  he  was  educated,  and  presented  to 
the  whole  Faubourg  St.  Germain,  beheld  his  patron,  La  Roche- 
foucault, in  the  position  of  a  disappointed  man.  An  early  ad- 
venture of  his  youth  had  humbled,  perhaps,  the  host  of  the 
Hotel  de  Rochefoucault.  At  the  battle  of  St.  Antoine,  where 
he  had  distinguished  himself,  a  musket  ball  had  nearly  deprived 
him  of  sight.  On  this  occasion  he  had  quoted  these  lines, 
taken  from  the  tragedy  of  "  Alcyonnee"  It  must,  however, 
be  premised  that  the  famous  Duchesse  de  Longueville  had 
urged  him  to  engage  in  the  wars  of  the  Fronde.  To  her  these 
lines  were  addressed : 


RACINE    AND    HIS   PLAYS.  247 

"Pour  meriter  son  cceur,  pour  plaire  a  ses  beaux  yeux, 
J'ai  fait  la  guerre  aux  Rois,  je  1'aurais  faite  aux  dieux." 

But  now  he  had  broken  off  his  intimacy  with  the  duchesse, 
and  he  therefore  parodied  these  lines : 

* '  Pour  ce  coeur  inconstant,  qu'enfin  je  connais  mieux, 
J'ai  fait  la  guerre  aux  Eois,  j'en  ai  perdue  les  yeux." 

Nevertheless  La  Rochefoucault  was  still  the  gay,  charm- 
ing, witty  host  and  courtier.  Racine  composed,  in  1660,  his 
"Nymphe  de  Seine"  in  honor  of  the  marriage  of  Louis  XIV.? 
and  was  then  brought  into  notice  of  those  whose  notice  was 
no  empty  compliment,  such  as,  in  our  day,  illustrious  dukes 
pay  to  more  illustrious  authors,  by  asking  them  to  be  jumbled 
in  a  crowd  at  a  time  when  the  rooks  are  beginning  to  caw. 
We  catch,  as  they  may,  the  shadow  of  a  dissolving  water-ice, 
or  see  the  exit  of  an  unattainable  tray  of  negus.  No ;  in  the 
days  of  Racine,  as  in  those  of  Halifax  and  Swift  in  England, 
solid  fruits  grew  out  of  fulsome  praise ;  and  Colbert,  then  min- 
ister, settled  a  pension  of  six  hundred  livres,  as  francs  were 
called  in  those  days  (twenty-four  pounds),  on  the  poet.  And 
with  this  the  former  pupil  of  Port  Royal  was  fain  to  be  con- 
tent. Still  he  was  so  poor  that  he  almost  went  into  the  church, 
an  uncle  offering  to  resign  him  a  priory  of  his  order  if  he  would 
become  a  regular.  He  was  a  candidate  for  orders,  and  wore  a 
sacerdotal  dress  when  he  wrote  the  tragedy  of  "  Theagenes," 
and  that  of  the  "  Freres  Ennemis,"  the  subject  of  which  was 
given  him  by  Moliere. 

He  continued,  in  spite  of  a  quarrel  with  the  saints  of  Port 
Royal,  to  produce  noble  dramas  from  time  to  time,  but  quitted 
theatrical  pursuits  after  bringing  out  (in  1677)  "Phedre,"  that 
chef-d'oeuvre  not  only  of  its  author,  but,  as  a  performance,  of 
the  unhappy  but  gifted  Rachel.  Corneille  was  old,  and  Paris 
looked  to  Racine  to  supply  his  place,  yet  he  left  the  theatrical 
world  forever.  Racine  had  been  brought  up  with  deep  relig- 
ious convictions ;  they  could  not,  however,  preserve  him  from 
a  mad,  unlawful  attachment.  He  loved  the  actress  Champ- 
mesle :  but  repentance  came.  He  resolved  not  only  to  write 
no  more  plays,  but  to  do  penance  for  those  already  given  to 
the  world.  He  was  on  the  eve  of  becoming,  in  his  penitence, 
a  Carthusian  friar,  when  his  religious  director  advised  marriage 
instead.  He  humbly  did  as  he  was  told,  and  united  himself  to 
the  daughter  of  a  treasurer  for  France,  of  Amiens,  by  whom 
he  had  seven  children.  It  was  only  at  the  request  of  Madame 
de  Maintenon  that  he  wrote  "Esther"  for  the  convent  of  St. 
Cyr,  where  it  was  first  acted. 

His  death  was  the  result  of  his  benevolent,  sensitive  nature. 


248 

Having  drawn  up  an  excellent  paper  on  the  miseries  of  the 
people,  he  gave  it  to  Madame  de  Maintenon  to  read  it  to  the 
king.  Louis,  in  a  transport  of  ill-humor,  said,  "  What !  does 
he  suppose  because  he  is  a  poet  that  he  ought  to  be  minister 
of  state  ?"  Racine  is  said  to  have  been  so  wounded  by  this 
speech  that  he  was  attacked  by  a  fever  and  died.  His  de- 
cease took  place  in  1699,  nineteen  years  after  that  of  La 
Rochefoucault,  who  died  in  1680. 

Among  the  circle  whom  La  Rochefoucault  loved  to  assem- 
ble was  Boileau,  Despreaux,  and  Madame  .de  Sevigne — the  one 
whose  wit  and  the  other  whose  grace  completed  the  delights 
of  that  salon.  A  life  so  prosperous  as  La  Rochefoucault's  had 
but  one  cloud— the  death  of  his  son,  who  was  killed  during 
the  passage  of  the  French  troops  over  the  Rhine.  We  attach 
to  the  character  of  this  accomplished  man  the  charms  of  wit ; 
we  may  also  add  the  higher  attractions  of  sensibility.  Notwith- 
standing the  worldly  and  selfish  character  which  is  breathed 
forth  in  his  "  Maxims  and  Reflections,"  there  lay  at  the  bot- 
tom of  his  heart  true  piety.  Struck  by  the  death  of  a  neigh- 
bor, this  sentiment  seems  even  on  the  point  of  being  express- 
ed ;  but,  adds  Madame  de  Sevigne,  and  her  phrase  is  untrans- 
latable, "  il  rfestpas  effieure." 

All  has  passed  away!  the  Fronde  has  become  a  memory, 
not  a  realized  idea.  Old  people  shake  their  heads,  and  talk 
of  Richelieu ;  of  his  gorgeous  palace  at  Rueil,  with  its  lake 
and  its  prison  thereon,  and  its  mysterious  dungeons,  and  its 
avenues  of  chestnuts,  and  its  fine  statues  ;  and  of  its  cardinal, 
smiling,  while  the  worm  that  never  dieth  is  eating  into  his 
very  heart ;  a  seared  conscience,  and  playing  the  fine  gentle- 
man to  fine  ladies  in  a  rich  stole,  and  with  much  garniture  of 
costly  lace ;  while  beneath  all  is  the  hair  shirt,  that  type  of 
penitence  and  sanctity  which  he  ever  wore  as  a  salvo  against 
all  that  passion  and  ambition  that  almost  burst  the  beating 
heart  beneath  that  hair  shirt.  Richelieu  has  gone  to  his  fa- 
thers. Mazarin  comes  on  the  scene ;  the  wily,  grasping  Italian. 
He  too  vanishes ;  and  forth,  radiant  in  youth,  and  strong  in 
power,  comes  Louis,  and  the  reign  of  politeness  and  periwigs 
begins. 

The  Due  de  Saint-Simon,  perhaps  the  greatest  portrait- 
painter  of  any  time,  has  familiarized  us  with  the  greatness,  the 
littleness,  the  graces,  the  defects  of  that  royal  actor  on  the 
stage  of  Europe,  whom  his  own  age  entitled  Louis  the  Great. 
A  wit,  in  his  writings,  of  the  first  order — if  we  comprise  un- 
der the  head  of  wit  the  deepest  discernment,  the  most  pene- 
trating satire — Saint-Simon  was  also  a  soldier,  philosopher,  a 
reformer,  a  Trappist,  and,  eventually,  a  devotee.  Like  all 


LOOKING    OUT   FOR   A    WIFE.  249 

young  men  who  wished  for  court  favor,  he  began  by  fighting : 
Louis  cared  little  for  carpet  knights.  He  entered,  however, 
into  a  scene  which  he  has  chronicled  with  as  much  fidelity  as 
our  journalists  do  a  police  report,  and  sat  quietly  down  to 
gather  up  observations — not  for  his  own  fame,  not  even  for 
the  amusement  of  his  children  or  grandchildren — but  for  the 
edification  of  posterity  yet  a  century  afar  off  his  own  time. 
The  treasures  were  buried  until  1829. 

A  word  or  two  about  Saint-Simon  and  his  youth.  At  nine- 
teen he  was  destined  by  his  mother  to  be  married.  Now  ev- 
ery one  knows  how  marriages  are  managed  in  France,  not  only 
in  the  time  of  Saint-Simon,  but  even  to  the  present  day.  A 
mother,  or  an  aunt,  or  a  grandmother,  or  an  experienced  friend, 
looks  out ;  be  it  for  son,  be  it  for  daughter,  it  is  the  business 
of  her  life.  She  looks  and  she  finds :  family,  suitable ;  fortune, 
convenient ;  person,  pas  mal ;  principles,  Catholic,  with  a  due 
abhorrence  of  heretics,  especially  English  ones.  After  a  time, 
the  lady  is  to  be  looked  at  by  the  unhappy  pretendu  •  a  church, 
a  mass,  or  vespers,  being  very  often  the  opportunity  agreed. 
The  victim  thinks  she  will  do.  The  proposal  is  discussed  by 
the  two  mammas ;  relatives  are  called  in ;  all  goes  well ;  the 
contract  is  signed ;  then,  a  measured  acquaintance  is  allowed : 
but  no  tete-a-tetes  /  no  idea  of  love.  "  What !  so  indelicate  a 
sentiment  before  marriage!  Let  me  not  hear  of  it,"  cries 
mamma,  in  a  sanctimonious  panic.  "  Love !  Quelle  betise  /" 
adds  mon  pere. 

But  Saint-Simon,  it  seems,  had  the  folly  to  wish  to  make 
a  marriage  of  inclination.  Rich,  pair  de  France,  his  father — 
an  old  roue,  who  had  been  page  to  Louis  XIII. — dead,  he  felt 
extremely  alone  in  the  world.  He  cast  about  to  see  whom  he 
could  select.  The  Due  de  Beauvilliers  had  eight  daughters ; 
a  misfortune,  it  may  be  thought,  in  France  or  any  where  else. 
Not  at  all :  three  of  the  young  ladies  were  kept  at  home,  to 
be  married ;  the  other  five  were  at  once  disposed  of,  as  they 
passed  the  unconscious  age  of  infancy,  in  convents.  Saint- 
Simon  was,  however,  disappointed.  He  offered,  indeed ;  first 
for  the  eldest,  who  was  not  then  fifteen  years  old ;  and  find- 
ing that  she  had  a  vocation  for  a  conventual  life,  went  on  to 
the  third,  and  was  going  through  the  whole  family,  when  he 
was  convinced  that  his  suit  was  impossible.  The  eldest  daugh- 
ter happened  to  be  a  disciple  of  Fenelon's,  and  was  on  the  very 
eve  of  being  vowed  to  Heaven. 

Saint-Simon  went  off  to  La  Trappe,  to  console  himself  for 
his  disappointment.  There  had  been  an  old  intimacy  between 
Monsieur  La  Trappe  and  the  father  of  Saint-Simon ;  and  this 
friendship  had  induced  him  to  buy  an  estate  close  to  the  an- 

L2 


250 

cient  abbey  where  La  Trappe  still  existed.  The  friendship 
became  hereditary ;  and  Saint-Simon,  though  still  a  youth,  re- 
vered and  loved  the  penitent  recluse  of  Ferte  au  Vidame,  of 
which  Lamartine  has  written  so  grand  and  so  poetical  a  de- 
scription. 

Let  us  hasten  over  his  marriage  with  Mademoiselle  de  Lor- 
ges,  who  proved  a  good  wife.  It  was  this  time  a  grandmother, 
the  Marechale  de  Lorges,  who  managed  the  treaty ;  and  Saint- 
Simon  became  the  happy  husband  of  an  innocent  blonde,  with 
a  majestic  air,  though  only  fifteen  years  of  age.  Let  us  hasten 
on,  passing  over  his  presents;  his  six  hundred  louis,  given  in 
a  corbeille  full  of  what  he  styles  "  galanteries ;"  his  mother's 
donation  of  jewelry ;  the  midnight  mass,  by  which  he  was 
linked  to  the  child  who  scarcely  knew  him ;  let  us  lay  all  that 
aside,  and  turn  to  his  court  life. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Louis  XIV.,  who  had  hitherto 
dressed  with  great  simplicity,  indicated  that  he  desired  his 
court  should  appear  in  all  possible  magnificence.  Instantly 
the  shops  were  emptied.  Even  gold  and  silver  appeared 
scarcely  rich  enough.  Louis  himself  planned  many  of  the 
dresses  for  any  public  occasion.  Afterward  he  repented  of 
the  extent  to  which  he  had  permitted  magnificence  to  go,  but 
it  was  then  impossible  to  check  the  excess. 

Versailles,  henceforth  in  all  its  grandeur,  contains  an  apart- 
ment which  is  called,  from  its  situation,  and  the  opportunities 
it  presents  of  looking  down  upon  the  actors  of  the  scene  around, 
E  (Eil  de  Bmuf.  The  revelations  of  the  CEil  de  Breuf,  during 
the  reign  of  Louis  XV.,  form  one  of  the  most  amazing  pictures 
of  wickedness,  venality,  power  misapplied,  genius  polluted,  that 
was  ever  drawn.  No  one  that  reads  that  infamous  book  can 
wonder  at  the  revolution  of  1789.  Let  us  conceive  Saint-Simon 
to  have  taken  his  stand  here,  in  this  region,  pure  in  the  time  of 
Louis  XIV.,  comparatively,  and  note  we  down  his  comments 
on  men  and  women. 

He  has  journeyed  up  to  court  from  La  Trappe,  which  has 
fallen  into  confusion  and  quarrels,  to  which  the  most  saintly 
precincts  are  peculiarly  liable. 

The  history  of  Mademoiselle  de  la  Valliere  was  not,  as  he 
tells  us,  of  his  time.  He  hears  of  her  death,  and  so  indeed 
does  the  king,  with  emotion.  She  expired  in  1710,  in  the 
Rue  St.  Jacques,  at  the  Carmelite  convent,  where,  though  she 
was  in  the  heart  of  Paris,  her  seclusion  from  the  world  had 
long  been  complete.  Among  the  nuns  of  the  convent  none 
was  so  humble,  so  penitent,  so  chastened  as  this  once  lovely 
Louise  de  la  Valliere,  now,  during  a  weary  term  of  thirty-five 
years,  "Marie  de  la  Misericorde."  She  had  fled  from  the 


THE   HISTORY    OF   LOUISE  DE   LA    VALLIERE.  251 

scene  of  her  fall  at  one-and-thirty  years  of  age.  Twice  had 
she  taken  refuge  among  the  "  blameless  vestals,"  whom  she 
envied  as  the  broken-spirited  envy  the  passive.  First,  she 
escaped  from  the  torture  of  witnessing  the  king's  passion  for 
Madame  de  Montespan,  by  hiding  herself  among  the  Bene- 
dictine sisters  at  St.  Cloud.  Thence  the  king  fetched  her  in 
person,  threatening  to  order  the  cloister  to  be  burnt.  Next, 
Lauzun,  by  the  command  of  Louis,  sought  her,  and  brought 
her  avec  mam  forte.  The  next  time  she  fled  no  more ;  but 
took  a  public  farewell  of  all  she  had  too  fondly  loved,  and 
throwing  herself  at  the  feet  of  the  queen,  humbly  entreated 
her  pardon.  Never  since  that  voluntary  sepulture  had  she 
ceased,  during  those  long  and  weary  years,  to  lament — as  the 
heart-stricken  can  alone  lament — her  sins.  In  deep  contrition 
she  learned  the  death  of  her  son  by  the  king,  and  bent  her 
head  meekly  beneath  the  chastisement. 

Three  years  before  her  death  the  triumphant  Athenee  de 
Montespan  had  breathed  her  last  at  Bourbon.  If  Louis  XIV. 
had  nothing  else  to  repent  of,  the  remorse  of  these  two  wom- 
en ought  to  have  wrung  his  heart.  Athenee  de  Montespan 
was  a  youthful,  innocent  beauty,  fresh  from  the  seclusion  of 
provincial  life,  when  she  attracted  the  blighting  regards  of 
royalty.  A  fete  was  to  be  given ;  she  saw,  she  heard  that  she 
was  its  object.  She  entreated  her  husband  to  take  her  back 
to  his  estate  in  Guyenne,  and  to  leave  her  there  till  the  king 
had  forgotten  her.  Her  husband,  in  fatal  confidence,  trusted 
her  resistance,  and  refused  her  petition.  It  was  a  life-long 
sorrow ;  and  he  soon  found  his  mistake.  He  lived  and  died 
passionately  attached  to  his  wife,  but  never  saw  her  after  her 
fall. 

When  she  retired  from  court,  to  make  room  for  the  empire 
of  the  subtle  De  Maintenon,  it  was  her  son,  the  Due  de  Maine, 
who  induced  her,  not  from  love,  but  from  ambition,  to  with- 
draw. She  preserved,  even  in  her  seclusion  in  the  country, 
the  style  of  a  queen,  which  she  had  assumed.  Even  her  nat- 
ural children  by  the  king  were  never  allowed  to  sit  in  her  pres- 
ence, on  a  fauteuil,  but  were  only  permitted  to  have  small 
chairs.  Every  one  went  to  pay  her  court,  and  she  spoke  to 
them  as  if  doing  them  an  honor;  neither  did  she  ever  return 
a  visit,  even  from  the  royal  family.  Her  fatal  beauty  endured 
to  the  last :  nothing  could  exceed  her  grace,  her  tact,  her  good 
sense  in  conversation,  her  kindness  to  every  one. 

But  it  was  long  before  her  restless  spirit  could  find  real 
peace.  She  threw  herself  on  the  guidance  of  the  Abbe  de  la 
Tour ;  for  the  dread  of  death  was  ever  upon  her.  He  sug- 
gested a  terrible  test  of  her  penitence.  It  was,  that  she 


252  A   MEAN   ACT   OF   LOUIS   QUATORZE. 

should  entreat  her  husband's  pardon,  and  return  to  him.  It 
was  a  fearful  struggle  with  herself,  for  she  was  naturally 
haughty  and  high  spirited;  but  she  consented.  After  long 
agonies  of  hesitation,  she  wrote  to  the  injured  man.  Her 
letter  was  couched  in  the  most  humble  language ;  but  it  re- 
ceived no  reply.  The  Marquis  de  Montespan,  through  a  third 
person,  intimated  to  her  that  he  would  neither  receive  her, 
nor  see  her,  nor  hear  her  name  pronounced.  At  his  death  she 
wore  widow's  weeds ;  but  never  assumed  his  arms,  nor  adopt- 
ed his  liveries. 

Henceforth,  all  she  had  was  given  to  the  poor.  When 
Louis  meanly  cut  down  her  pension,  she  sent  word  that  she 
was  sorry  for  the  poor,  not  for  herself;  they  would  be  the 
losers.  She  then  humbled  herself  to  the  very  dust :  wore  the 
hardest  clo'th  next  her  fair  skin ;  had  iron  bracelets ;  and  an 
iron  girdle,  which  made  wounds  on  her  body.  Moreover,  she 
punished  the  most  unruly  members  of  her  frame :  she  kept 
her  tongue  in  bounds ;  she  ceased  to  slander ;  she  learned  to 
bless.  The  fear  of  death  still  haunted  her ;  she  lay  in  bed 
with  every  curtain  drawn,  the  room  lighted  up  with  wax  can- 
dles ;  while  she  hired  watchers  to  sit  up  all  night,  and  insisted 
that  they  should  never  cease  talking  or  laughing,  lest,  when 
she  woke,  the  fear  of  death  might  come  over  her  affrighted 
spirit. 

She  died  at  last  after  a  few  hours'  illness,  having  just  time 
to  order  all  her  household  to  be  summoned,  and  before  them 
to  make  a  public  confession  of  her  sins.  As  she  lay  expiring, 
blessing  God  that  she  died  far  away  from  the  children  of  her 
adulterous  connection,  the  Comte  d'Antin,  her  only  child  by 
the  Marquis  de  Montespan,  arrived.  Peace  and  trust  had  then 
come  at  last  to  the  agonized  woman.  She  spoke  to  him  about 
her  state  of  mind,  and  expired. 

To  Madame  de  Maintenon  the  event  would,  it  was  thought, 
be  a  relief;  yet  she  wept  bitterly  on  hearing  of  it.  The  king 
showed,  on  the  contrary,  the  utmost  indifference,  on  learning 
that  one  whom  he  had  once  loved  so  much  was  gone  forever. 

All  has  passed  away !  The  (Eil  de  Bwuf  is  now  important 
only  as  being  pointed  out  to  strangers ;  Versailles  is  a  show- 
place,  not  a  habitation.  Saint-Simon,  who  lived  until  1775, 
was  truly  said  to  have  turned  his  back  on  the  new  age,  and  to 
live  in  the  memories  of  a  former  world  of  wit  and  fashion. 
He  survived  until  the  era  of  the  "  Encyclopedia"  of  Voltaire 
and  Jean- Jacques  Rousseau.  He  lived,  indeed,  to  hear  that 
Montesquieu  was  no  more.  How  the  spirit  of  Louis  XIV. 
spoke  in  his  contemptuous  remarks  on  Voltaire,  whom  he 
would  only  call  Arouet :  "  The  son  of  my  father's  and  my  own 
notary." 


SAINT-SIMON'S  MEMOIES  OF  HIS  OWN  TIME.          253 

At  length,  after  attaining  his  eightieth  year,  the  chronicler, 
who  knew  the  weaknesses,  the  vices,  the  peculiarities  of  man- 
kind, even  to  a  hair's  breadth,  expired ;  having  long  given  up 
the  court  and  occupied  himself,  while  secluded  in  his  country- 
seat,  solely  with  the  revising  and  amplification  of  his  wonder- 
ful Memoirs. 

No  works,  it  has  been  remarked,  since  those  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  have  excited  so  much  sensation  as  the  Memoirs  of  his 
own  time,  by  the  soldier,  ambassador,  and  Trappist^  Due  de 
Saint-Simon. 


HORACE  WALPOLE. 

"  HAD  this  elegant  writer,"  remarks  the  compiler  of  "  Wal- 
poliana,"  "  composed  memoirs  of  his  own  life,  an  example  au- 
thorized by  eminent  names,  ancient  and  modern,  every  other 
pen  must  have  been  dropped  in  despair,  so  true  was  it  that 
4  he  united  the  good  sense  of  Fontenelle  with  the  Attic  salt 
and  graces  of  Count  Anthony  Hamilton.' " 

But  "  Horace"  was  a  man  of  great  literary  modesty,  and  al- 
ways undervalued  his  own  efforts.  His  life  was  one  of  little 
incident :  it  is  his  character,  his  mind,  the  society  around  him, 
the  period  in  which  he  shone,  that  give  the  charm  to  his  cor- 
respondence, and  the  interest  to  his  biography. 

Besides,  he  had  the  weakness  common  to  several  other  fine 
gentlemen  who  have  combined  letters  and  haut  ton,  of  being 
ashamed  of  the  literary  character.  The  vulgarity  of  the  court, 
its  indifference  to  all  that  was  not  party  writing,  whether  po- 
lemical or  political,  cast  a  shade  over  authors  in  his  time. 

Never  was  there,  beneath  all  his  assumed  Whig  principles, 
a  more  profound  aristocrat  than  Horace  Walpole.  He  was, 
by  birth,  one  of  those  well-descended  English  gentlemen  who 
have  often  scorned  the  title  of  noble,  and  who  have  repudiated 
the  notion  of  merging  their  own  ancient  names  in  modern 
titles.  The  commoners  of  England  hold  a  proud  pre-eminence. 
When  some  low-born  man  entreated  James  I.  to  make  him  a 
gentleman,  the  well-known  answer  was,  "  N~a,  na,  I  canna !  I 
could  mak  thee  a  lord,  but  none  but  God  Almighty  can  mak 
a  gentleman." 

Sir  Robert  Walpole,  afterward  minister  to  George  II.,  and 
eventually  Lord  Orford,  belonged  to  an  ancient  family  in  Nor- 
folk ;  he  was  a  third  son,  and  was  originally  destined  for  the 
church,  but  the  death  of  his  elder  brethren  having  left  him 
heir  to  the  family  estate,  in  1698,  he  succeeded  to  a  property 
which  ought  to  have  yielded  him  £2000  a  year,  but  which 
was  crippled  with  various  incumbrances.  In  order  to  relieve 
himself  of  these,  Sir  Robert  married  Catherine  Shorter,  the 
granddaughter  of  Sir  John  Shorter,  who  had  been  illegally 
and  arbitrarily  appointed  Lord  Mayor  of  London  by  James  II. 

Horace  was  her  youngest  child,  and  was  born  in  Arlington 
Street,  on  the  24th  of  September,  1717,  O.  S.  Six  years  after- 
ward he  was  inoculated  for  the  small-pox,  a  precaution  which 


256  WALPOLE'S  PABENTAGE. 

he  records  as  worthy  of  remark,  since  the  operation  had  then 
only  recently  been  introduced  by  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Mon- 
tagu from  Turkey. 

He  is  silent,  however,  naturally  enough,  as  to  one  important 
point — his  real  parentage.  The  character  of  his  mother  was 
by  no  nreans  such  as  to  disprove  an  assertion  which  gained 

General  belief:  this  was,  that  Horace  was  the  offspring,  not  of 
ir  Robert  Walpole,  but  of  Carr,  Lord  Hervey,  the  eldest  son 
of  the  Earl  of  Bristol,  and  the  elder  brother  of  Lord  Hervey 
whose  "  Memoirs  of  the  Court  of  George  II."  are  so  generally 
known.  Carr,  Lord  Hervey,  was  witty,  eccentric,  and  sar- 
castic :  and  from  him  Horace  Walpole  is  said  to  have  inherit- 
ed his  wit,  his  eccentricity,  his  love  of  literature,  and  his  pro- 
found contempt  for  all  mankind,  excepting  only  a  few  mem- 
bers of  a  cherished  and  exclusive  clique. 

In  the  Notes  of  his  life  which  Horace  Walpole  left  for  the 
use  of  his  executor,  Robert  Berry,  Esq.,  and  of  his  daughter, 
Miss  Berry,  he  makes  this  brief  mention  of  Lady  Walpole : 
"My  mother  died  in  1737."  He  was  then  twenty  years  of  age. 
But  beneath  this  seemingly  slight  recurrence  to  his  mother, 
a  regret  which  never  left  him  through  life  was  buried.  Like 
Cowper,  he  mourned,  as  the  profoundest  of  all  sorrows,  the 
loss  of  that  life-long  friend. 

"My  mother,  when  I  learn'd  that  thou  wast  dead, 
Say,  wast  thou  conscious  of  the  tears  I  shed  ? 
Hovered  thy  spirit  o'er  thy  sorrowing  son  ? 
Wretch  even  then,  life's  journey  just  begun." 

Although  Horace  in  many  points  bore  a  strong  resemblance 
to  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  he  rarely  if  ever  received  from  that 
jovial,  heartless,  able  man,  disgrace  as  he  was  to  the  English 
aristocracy,  any  proof  of  affection.  An  outcast  from  his  fa- 
ther's heart,  the  whole  force  of  the  boy's  love  centred  in  his 
mother;  yet  in  after  life  no  one  reverenced  Sir  Robert  Wal- 
pole so  much  as  his  supposed  son.  To  be  adverse  to  the  min- 
ister was  to  be  adverse  to  the  unloved  son  who  cherished  his 
memory.  What "  my  father"  thought,  did,  and  said,  was  law ; 
what  his  foes  dared  to  express  was  heresy.  Horace  had  the 
family  mania  strong  upon  him :  the  world  was  made  for 
Walpoles,  whose  views  were  never  to  be  controverted,  nor 
whose  faith  impugned.  Yet  Horace  must  have  witnessed, 
perhaps  without  comprehending  it,  much  disunion  at  home. 
Lady  Walpole,  beautiful  and  accomplished,  could  not  succeed 
in  riveting  her  husband  to  his  conjugal  duties.  Gross  licen- 
tiousness was  the  order  of  the  day,  and  Sir  Robert  was  among 
the  most  licentious :  he  left  his  lovely  wife  to  the  perilous  at- 
tentions of  all  the  young  courtiers  who  fancied  that  by  court- 


"LITTLE  HORACE"  IN  ARLINGTON  STREET.  25 f 

ing  the  Premier's  wife  they  could  secure  Walpole's  good  offi- 
ces. Sir  Robert,  according  to  Pope,  was  one  of  those  who — 

"Never  made  a  friend  in  private  life, 
And  was,  besides,  a  tyrant  to  his  wife." 

At  all  events,  if  not  a  tyrant,  he  was  indifferent  to  those  cir- 
cumstances which  reflected  upon  him,  and  were  injurious  to 
her.  He  was  conscious  that  he  had  no  right  to  complain  of 
any  infidelity  on  her  part,  and  he  left  her  to  be  surrounded  by 
men  whom  he  knew  to  be  profligates  of  the  most  dangerous 
pretensions  to  wit  and  elegance. 

It  was  possibly  not  unfrequently  that  Horace,  his  mother's 
pet,  gleaned  in  the  drawing-rooms  of  Arlington  Street  his  first 
notions  of  that  persiflage  which  was  the  fashion  of  the  day. 
We  can  fancy  him  a  precocious,  old-fashioned  little  boy,  at  his 
mother's  apron-string,  while  Carr,  Lord  Hervey,  was  paying 
his  devoirs ;  we  see  him  gazing  with  wondering  eyes  at  Pulte- 
ney,  Earl  of  Bath,  with  his  blue  ribbon  across  his  laced  coat ; 
while  compassionating  friends,  observing  the  pale-faced  boy  in 
that  hot-house  atmosphere,  in  which  both  mind  and  body  were 
like  forced  plants,  prophesied  that  "  little  Horace"  could  not 
possibly  live  to  be  a  man. 

He  survived,  however,  two  sisters,  who  died  in  childhood, 
and  became  dearer  and  dearer  to  his  fond  mother. 

In  his  old  age,  Horace  delighted  in  recalling  anecdotes  of 
his  infancy:  in  these  his  mother's  partiality  largely  figured. 
Brought  up  among  courtiers  and  ministers,  his  childish  talk 
was  all  of  kings  and  princes ;  and  he  wTas  a  gossip  both  by  in- 
clination and  habit.  His  greatest  desire  in  life  was  to  see  the 
king — George  I.,  and  his  nurses  and  attendants  augmented  his 
wish  by  their  exalted  descriptions  of  the  grandeur  which  he 
affected,  in  after  life,  to  despise.  He  entreated  his  mother  to 
take  him  to  St.  James's.  When  relating  the  incidents  of  the 
scene  in  which  he  was  first  introduced  to  a  court,  Horace  Wai- 
pole  speaks  of  the  "infinite  good-nature  of  his  father,  who  nev- 
er thwarted  any  of  his  children,"  and  "  suffered  him,"  he  says, 
"  to  be  too  much  indulged." 

Some  difficulties  attended  the  fruition  of  the  forward  boy's 
wish.  The  Duchess  of  Kendal  was  jealous  of  Sir  Robert  Wal- 
pole's influence  with  the  king;  her  aim  was  to  bring  Lord 
Bolingbroke  into  power.  The  childish  fancy  was,  neverthe- 
less, gratified :  and  under  his  mother's  care  he  was  conducted 
to  the  apartments  of  the  Duchess  of  Kendal  in  St.  James's. 

"A  favor  so  unusual  to  be  asked  by  a  boy  often  years  old," 
he  afterward  wrote  in  his  "Reminiscences,"  "was  still  too 
slight  to  be  refused  to  the  wife  of  the  first  minister  and  her 


258  CHARACTERISTIC   ANECDOTE   OP   GEORGE   I. 

darling  child."  However,  as  it  was  not  to  be  a  precedent,  the 
interview  was  to  be  private,  and  at  night. 

It  was  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening  when  Lady  Walpole,  lead- 
ing her  son,  was  admitted  into  the  apartments  of  Melusina  de 
Schulenberg,  Countess  of  Walsingham,  who  passed  under  the 
name  of  the  Duchess  of  Kendal's  niece,  but  who  was,  in  fact, 
her  daughter,  by  George  I.  The  polluted  rooms  in  which 
Lady  Walsingham  lived  were  afterward  occupied  by  the  two 
mistresses  of  George  II. — the  Countess  of  Suffolk,  and  Mad- 
ame de  Walmoden,  Countess  of  Yarmouth. 

With  Lady  Walsingham,  Lady  Walpole  and  her  little  son 
waited  until,  notice  having  been  given  that  the  king  had  come 
down  to  supper,  he  was  led  into  the  presence  of  "  that  good 
sort  of  man,"  as  he  calls  George  I.  That  monarch  was  pleased 
to  permit  the  young  courtier  to  kneel  down  and  kiss  his  hand. 
A  few  words  were  spoken  by  the  august  personage,  and  Hor- 
ace was  led  back  into  the  adjoining  room. 

But  the  vision  of  that  "  good  sort  of  man"  was  present  to 
him  when,  in  old  age,  he  wrote  down  his  recollections  for  his 
beloved  Miss  Berry.  By  the  side  of  a  tall,  lean,  ill-favored  old 
German  lady — the  Duchess  of  Kendal — stood  a  pale,  short, 
elderly  man,  with  a  dark  tie-wig,  in  a  plain  coat  and  waist- 
coat ;  these  and  his  breeches  were  all  of  snuff-colored  cloth, 
and  his  stockings  of  the  same  color.  By  the  blue  ribbons 
alone  could  the  young  subject  of  this  "  good  sort  of  man"  dis- 
cern that  he  was  in  the  presence  of  majesty.  Little  interest 
could  be  elicited  in  this  brief  interview,  yet  Horace  thought  it 
his  painful  duty,  being  also  the  son  of  a  prime  minister,  to  shed 
tears  when,  with  the  other  scholars  of  Eton  College,  he  walked 
in  the  procession  to  the  proclamation  of  George  II.  And  no 
doubt  he  was  one  of  very  few  personages  in  England  whose  eyes 
were  moistened  for  that  event.  Nevertheless,  there  was  some- 
thing of  bonhommie  in  the  character  of  George  I.  that  one 
misses  in  his  successor.  His  love  of  punch,  and  his  habit  of 
becoming  a  little  tipsy  over  his  private  dinners  with  Sir  Rob- 
ert Walpole,  were  English  as  well  as  German  traits,  and  were 
regarded  almost  as  condescensions ;  and  then  he  had  a  kind  of 
slow  wit,  that  was  turned  upon  the  venial  officials  whose  per- 
quisites were  at  their  disgraceful  height  in  his  time. 

"  A  strange  country  this,"  said  the  monarch,  in  his  most 
clamorous  German :  "  one  day,  after  I  came  to  St.  James's,  I 
looked  out  of  the  window,  and  saw  a  park,  with  walks,  laurels, 
etc. ;  these  they  told  me  were  mine.  The  next  day  Lord  Chet- 
wynd,  the  ranger  of  my  park,  sends  me  a  brace  of  carp  out  of 
my  canal ;  I  was  told,  thereupon,  that  I  must  give  five  guineas 
to  Lord  Chetwynd's  porter  for  bringing  me  my  own  fish,  out 


259 

of  my  own  canal,  in  my  own  park !"  In  spite  of  some  agreea- 
ble qualities,  George  I.  was,  however,  any  thing  but  a  "  good 
sort  of  man."  It  is  difficult  how  to  rank  the  two  first  Georges ; 
both  were  detestable  as  men,  and  scarcely  tolerable  as  mon- 
archs.  The  foreign  deeds  of  George  I.  were  stained  with  the 
supposed  murder  of  Count  Konigsmark :  the  English  career 
of  George  II.  was  one  of  the  coarsest  profligacy.  Their  exam- 
ple was  infamous. 

His  father's  only  sister  having  become  the  second  wife  of 
Charles  Lord  Townshend,  Horace  was  educated  with  his  cous- 
ins ;  and  the  tutor  selected  was  Edward  Weston,  the  son  of 
Stephen,  Bishop  of  Exeter :  this  preceptor  was  afterward  en- 
gaged in  a  controversy  with  Dr.  Warburton,  concerning  the 
"  Naturalization  of  the  Jews."  By  that  learned,  haughty  dis- 
putant, he  is  termed  "  a  gazetteer  by  profession — by  inclina- 
tion a  Methodist."  Such  was  the  man  who  guided  the  dawn- 
ing intellect  of  Horace  Walpole.  Under  his  care  he  remained 
until  he  went,  in  1727,  to  Eton.  But  Walpole's  was  not  mere- 
ly a  scholastic  education:  he  was  destined  for  the  law — and, 
on  going  up  to  Cambridge,  was  obliged  to  attend  lectures  on 
civil  law.  He  went  from  Eton  to  King's  College — where  he 
was,  however,  more  disposed  to  what  are  termed  accomplish- 
ments than  to  deep  reading.  At  Cambridge  he  even  studied 
Italian :  at  home  he  learned  to  dance  and  fence ;  and  took  les- 
sons in  drawing  from  Bernard  Lens,  drawing-master  to  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland  and  his  sisters.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  he  left  Cambridge  without  taking  a  degree. 

But  fortune  was  lying,  as  it  were,  in  wait  for  him ;  and  va- 
rious sinecures  had  been  reserved  for  the  Minister's  youngest 
son :  first,  he  became  Inspector  of  the  Imports  and  Exports  in 
the  Customs ;  but  soon  resigned  that  post  to  be  Usher  of  the 
Exchequer.  "  And  as  soon,"  he  writes,  "  as  I  became  of  age 
I  took  possession  of  two  other  little  patent  places  in  the  Ex- 
chequer, called  Comptroller  of  the  Pipe,  and  Clerk  of  the  Es- 
treats. They  had  been  held  for  me  by  Mr.  Fane." 

Such  was  the  mode  in  which  younger  sons  were  then  pro- 
vided for  by  a  minister ;  nor  has  the  unworthy  system  died 
out  in  our  time,  although  greatly  modified. 

Horace  was  growing  up  meantime,  not  an  awkward,  but  a 
somewhat  insignificant  youth,  with  a  short,  slender  figure: 
which  always  retained  a  boyish  appearance  when  seen  from 
behind.  His  face  was  commonplace,  except  when  his  really 
expressive  eyes  sparkled  with  intelligence,  or  melted  into  the 
sweetest  expression  of  kindness.  But  his  laugh  was  forced 
and  uncouth :  and  even  in  his  smile  there  was  a  hard,  sarcastic 
expression  that  made  One  regret  that  he  smiled. 


260  SCHOOLBOY  DAYS. 

He  was  now  in  possession  of  an  income  of  £1 700  annually, 
and  he  looked  naturally  to  the  Continent,  to  which  all  young 
members  of  the  aristocracy  repaired,  after  the  completion  of 
their  collegiate  life. 

He  had  been  popular  at  Eton :  he  was  also,  it  is  said,  both 
beloved  and  valued  at  Cambridge.  In  reference  to  his  Etoni- 
an days  he  says,  in  one  of  his  letters :  "  I  can't  say  I  am  sorry 
I  was  never  quite  a  schoolboy :  an  expedition  against  barge- 
men, or  a  match  at  cricket,  may  be  very  pretty  things  to  rec- 
ollect ;  but,  thank  my  stars,  I  can  remember  things  that  are 
very  near  as  pretty.  The  beginning  of  my  Roman  history  was 
spent  in  the  asylum,  or  conversing  in  Egeria's  hallowed  grove ; 
not  in  thumping  and  pummeling  King  Amulius's  herdsmen."* 

"I  remember,"  he  adds,  "when  I  was  at  Eton,  and  Mr. 
Bland  had  set  me  on  an  extraordinary  task,  I  used  sometimes 
to  pique  myself  upon  not  getting  it,  because  it  was  not  imme- 
diately my  school  business.  What !  learn  more  than  I  was 
absolutely  forced  to  learn !  I  felt  the  weight  of  learning  that ; 
for  I  was  a  blockhead,  and  pushed  above  my  parts"  \ 

Popular  among  his  schoolfellows,  Horace  formed  friendships 
at  Eton  which  mainly  influenced  his  after  life.  Richard  West, 
the  son  of  West,  Lord  Chancellor  of  Ireland,  and  the  grand- 
son, on  his  mother's  side,  of  Bishop  Burnet :  together  with  a 
youth  named  Assheton  —  formed,  with  the  poet  Gray,  and 
Horace  himself,  what  the  young  wit  termed  the  "  Quadruple 
Alliance."  Then  there  was  the  "  triumvirate,"  George  Mon- 
tagu, Charles  Montagu,  and  Horace — next  came  George  Sel- 
wyn  and  Hanbury  Williams ;  lastly,  a  retired,  studious  youth, 
a  sort  of  foil  to  all  these  gay,  brilliant  young  wits — a  certain 
William  Cole,  a  lover  of  old  books,  and  of  quaint  prints.  And 
in  all  these  boyish  friendships,  some  of  which  were  carried 
from  Eton  to  Cambridge,  may  be  traced  the  foundation  of  the 
Horace  Walpole,  of  Strawberry  Hill  and  of  Berkeley  Square. 
To  Gray  he  owed  his  ambition  to  be  learned,  if  possible — po- 
etical, if  nature  had  not  forbidden ;  to  the  Montagus,  his  dash 
and  spirit ;  to  Sir  Hanbury  Williams,  his  turn  forjeux  d 'esprit , 
as  a  part  of  the  completion  of  a  fine  gentleman's  education ; 
to  George  Selwyn,  his  appreciation  of  what  was  then  consid- 
ered wit — but  which  we  moderns  are  not  worthy  to  appreci- 
ate. Lord  Hertford  and  Henry  Conway,  Walpole's  cousins, 
were  also  his  schoolfellows ;  and  for  them  he  evinced  through- 
out his  long  life  a  warm  regard.  William  Pitt,  Lord  Chat- 
ham— chiefly  remembered  at  Eton  for  having  been  flogged 
for  being  out  of  bounds — was  a  contemporary,  though  not  an 
intimate  of  Horace  Walpole's  at  Eton. 

*  Life  by  Warburton,  p.  70.  f  Ibid.  p.  63. 


BOYISH   FRIENDSHIPS.  261 

His  regard  for  Gray  did  him  infinite  credit :  yet  never  were 
two  men  more  dissimilar  as  they  advanced  in  life.  Gray  had 
no  aristocratic  birth  to  boast ;  and  Horace  dearly  loved  birth, 
refinement,  position,  all  that  comprises  the  cherished  term 
"quality."  Thomas  Gray,  more  illustrious  for  the  little  his 
fastidious  judgment  permitted  him  to  give  to  the  then  critical 
world,  than  many  have  been  in  their  productions  of  volumes, 
was  born  in  Cornhill — his  father  being  a  worthy  citizen.  He 
was  just  one  year  older  than  Walpole,  but  an  age  his  senior 
in  gravity,  precision,  and  in  a  stiff  resolution  to  maintain  his 
independence.  He  made  one  fatal  step,  fatal  to  his  friendship 
for  Horace,  when  he  forfeited — by  allowing  Horace  to  take 
him  and  pay  his  expenses  during  a  long  continental  tour — his 
independence.  Gray  had  many  points  which  made  him  vul- 
nerable to  Walpolc's  shafts  of  ridicule ;  and  Horace  had  a  host 
of  faults  which  excited  the  stern  condemnation  of  Gray.  The 
author  of  the  ;' Elegy" — which  Johnson  has  pronounced  to  be 
the  noblest  ode  in  our  language — was  one  of  the  most  learned 
men  of  his  time,  "  and  was  equally  acquainted  with  the  elegant 
and  profound  paths  of  science,  and  that  not  superficially,  but 
thoroughly ;  knowing  in  every  branch  of  history,  both  natural 
and  civil,  as  having  read  all  the  original  historians  of  England, 
France,  and  Italy ;  a  great  antiquarian,  who  made  criticism, 
metaphysics,  morals,  and  politics  a  principal  part  of  his  plan 
of  study — who  was  uncommonly  fond  of  voyages  and  travels 
of  all  sorts — and  who  had  a  fine  taste  in  painting,  prints,  archi- 
tecture, and  gardening." 

What  a  companion  for  a  young  man  of  taste  and  sympathy! 
but  the  friends  were  far  too  clever  long  to  agree.  Gray  was 
haughty,  impatient,  intolerant  of  the  peculiarities  of  others,  ac- 
cording to  the  author  of  "  Walpoliana :"  doubtless  he  detect- 
ed the  vanity,  the  actual  selfishness,  the  want  of  earnest  feel- 
ing in  Horace,  which  had  all  been  kept  down  at  school,  where 
boys  are  far  more  unsparing  Mentors  than  their  betters.  In 
vain  did  they  travel  en  prince,  and  all  at  Walpole's  expense : 
in  vain  did  they  visit  courts,  and  receive  affability  from  princes : 
in  vain  did  he  of  Cornhill  participate  for  a  brief  period  in  the 
attentions  lavished  on  the  son  of  a  British  Prime  Minister :  they 
quarreled — and  we  almost  reverence  Gray  for  it,  more  especial- 
ly when  we  find  the  author  of  "  Walpoliana"  expressing  his 
conviction  that "  had  it  not  been  for  this  idle  indulgence  of  his 
hasty  temper,  Mr.  Gray  would  immediately  on  his  return  home 
have  received,  as  usual,  a  pension  or  office  from  Sir  Robert 
Walpole."  We  are  inclined  to  feel  contempt  for  the  anony- 
mous writer  of  that  amusing  little  book. 

After  a  companionship  of  four  years,  Gray,  nevertheless,  re- 


262  A   DKEAEY   DOOM. 

turned  to  London.  He  had  been  educated  with  the  expecta- 
tion of  being  a  barrister ;  but  finding  that  funds  were  wanting 
to  pursue  a  legal  education,  he  gave  up  a  set  of  chambers  in 
the  Temple,  which  he  had  occupied  previous  to  his  travels,  and 
retired  to  Cambridge. 

Henceforth  what  a  singular  contrast  did  the  lives  of  these 
once  fond  friends  present.  In  the  small,  quaint  rooms  of  Pe- 
ter-House,* Gray  consumed  a  dreary  celibacy,  consoled  by  the 
Muse  alone,  who — if  other  damsels  found  no  charms  in  his 
somewhat  priggish,  wooden  countenance,  or  in  his  manners, 
replete,  it  is  said,  with  an  unpleasant  consciousness  of  superi- 
ority— never  deserted  him.  His  college  existence,  varied  only 
by  his  being  appointed  Professor  of  Modern  History,  was,  for 
a  brief  space,  exchanged  for  an  existence  almost  as  studious  in 
London.  Between  the  years  1759  and  1762,  he  took  lodgings, 
we  find,  in  Southampton  Row — a  pleasant  locality  then,  open- 
ing to  the  fields — in  order  to  be  near  the  British  Museum,  at 
that  time  just  opened  to  the  public.  Here  his  intense  studies 
were,  it  may  be  presumed,  relieved  by  the  lighter  task  of  pe- 
rusing the  Harleian  Manuscripts ;  and  here  he  formed  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Mason,  a  dull,  affected  poet,  whose  celebrity  is 
greater  as  the  friend  and  biographer  of  Gray,  than  even  as  the 
author  of  those  verses  on  the  death  of  Lady  Coventry,  in 
which  there  are,  nevertheless,  some  beautiful  lines.  Gray  died 
in  college — a  doom  that,  next  to  ending  one's  days  in  a  jail  or 
a  convent,  seems  the  dreariest.  He  died  of  the  gout :  a  suit- 
able, and,  in  that  region  and  in  those  three-bottle  days,  almost 
an  inevitable  disease  ;  but  there  is  no  record  of  his  having  "been 
intemperate. 

While  Gray  was  poring  over  dusty  manuscripts,  Horace  was 
beginning  that  career  of  prosperity  which  was  commenced  by 
the  keenest  enjoyment  of  existence.  He  has  left  us,  in  his 
Letters,  some  brilliant  passages,  indicative  of  the  delights  of 
his  boyhood  and  youth.  Like  him,  we  linger  over  a  period 
still  fresh,  still  hopeful,  still  generous  in  impulse — still  strong 
in  faith  in  the  world's  worth — before  we  hasten  on  to  portray 
the  man  of  the  world,  heartless,  not  wholly,  perhaps,  but  wont 
to  check  all  feeling  till  it  was  well-nigh  quenched ;  little-mind- 
ed; bitter,  if  not  spiteful;  witn  many  acquaintances  and  scarce 
one  friend — the  Horace  Walpole  of  Berkeley  Square  and  Straw- 
berry Hill. 

"  Youthful  passages  of  life  are,"  he  says,  "  the  chippings  of 

Pitt's  diamond,  set  into  little  heart-rings  with  mottoes ;  the 

stone  itself  more  worth,  the  filings  more  gentle  and  agreeable. 

Alexander,  at  the  head  of  the  world,  never  tasted  the  true 

*  Gray  migrated  to  Pembroke  in  1 756. 


WALPOLE'S  DESCKIPTION  OF  YOUTHFUL  DELIGHTS.     263 

pleasure  that  boys  of  his  age  have  enjoyed  at  the  head  of  a 
school.  Little  intrigues,  little  schemes  and  policies,  engage 
their  thoughts ;  and  at  the  same  time  that  they  are  laying  the 
foundation  for  their  middle  age  of  life,  the  mimic  republic  they 
live  in  furnishes  materials  of  conversation  for  their  latter  age ; 
and  old  men  can  not  be  said  to  be  children  a  second  time  with 
greater  truth  from  any  one  cause,  than  their  living  over  again 
their  childhood  in  imagination." 

Again :  "  Dear  George,  were  not  the  playing-fields  at  Eton 
food  for  all  manner  of  flights  ?  No  old  maid's  gown,  though 
it  had  been  tormented  into  all  the  fashions  from  King  James 
to  King  George,  ever  underwent  so  many  transformations  as 
these  poor  plains  have  in  my  idea.  At  first  I  was  contented 
with  tending  a  visionary  flock,  and  sighing  some  pastoral  name 
to  the  echo  of  the  cascade  under  the  bridge.  .  .  As  I  got  fur- 
ther into  Virgil  and  Clelia,  I  found  myself  transported  from 
Arcadia  to  the  garden  of  Italy ;  and  saw  Windsor  Castle  in  no 
other  view  than  the  Capitoli  immobile  saxum." 

Horace  Walpole's  humble  friend  Assheton  was  another  of 
those  Etonians  who  were  plodding  on  to  independence,  while 
he,  set  forward  by  fortune  and  interest,  was  accomplishing 
reputation.  Assheton  was  the  son  of  a  worthy  man,  who  pre- 
sided over  the  Grammar  School  at  Lancaster,  upon  a  stipend 
of  £32  a  year.  Assheton's  mother  had  brought  to  her  hus- 
band a  small  estate.  This  was  sold  to  educate  the  "  boys :" 
they  were  both  clever  and  deserving.  One  became  the  fellow 
of  Trinity  College ;  the  other,  the  friend  of  Horace,  rose  into 
notice  as  the  tutor  of  the  young  Earl  of  Plymouth ;  then  be- 
came a  D.D.,  and  a  fashionable  preacher  in  London ;  was 
elected  preacher  at  Lincoln's  Inn ;  attacked  the  Methodists ; 
and  died,  at  fifty-three,  at  variance  with  Horace — this  Asshe- 
ton, whom  once  he  had  loved  so  much. 

Horace,  on  the  other  hand,  after  having  seen  all  that  was 
most  exclusive,  attractive,  and  lofty,  both  in  art  and  nature, 
came  home  without  bringing,  he  declares,  "one  word  of 
French  or  Italian  for  common  use."  A  country  tour  in  En- 
gland delighted  him :  the  populousness,  the  ease  in  the  people 
also,  charmed  him.  "  Canterbury  was  a  paradise  to  Modena, 
Reggio,  or  Parma."  He  had,  before  he  returned,  perceived 
that  nowhere  except  in  England  was  there  the  distinction  of 
"  middling  people ;"  he  now  found  that  nowhere  but  in  En- 
gland were  middling  houses.  "  How  snug  they  are !"  exclaims 
this  scion  of  the  exclusives.  Then  he  runs  on  into  an  anecdote 
about  Pope  and  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales.  "  Mr.  Pope," 
said  the  prince,  "  you  don't  love  princes."  "  Sir,  I  beg  your 
pardon."  "  Well,  you  don't  love  kings,  then."  "  Sir,  I  own 


264  THE  POMFBETS. 

I  like  the  lion  better  before  his  claws  are  grown."  The  "  Hor- 
ace Walpole"  began  now  to  creep  out :  never  was  he  really  at 
home  except  in  a  court  atmosphere.  Still  he  assumed,  even  at 
twenty-four,  to  be  the  boy. 

"  You  won't  find  me,"  he  writes  to  Harry  Conway,  "  much 
altered,  I  believe ;  at  least  outwardly.  I  am  not  grown  a  bit 
shorter  or  fatter,  but  am  just  the  same  long,  lean  creature  as 
usual.  Then  I  talk  no  French  but  to  my  footman ;  nor  Italian, 
but  to  myself.  What  inward  alterations  may  have  happened 
to  me  you  will  discover  best ;  for  you  know  'tis  said,  one  never 
knows  that  one's  self.  I  will  answer,  that  that  part  of  it  that 
belongs  to  you  has  not  suffered  the  least  change — I  took  care 
of  that.  For  virtu^  I  have  a  little  to  entertain  you — it  is  my 
sole  pleasure.  I  am  neither  young  enough  nor  old  enough  to 
be  in  love." 

Nevertheless,  it  peeps  out  soon  after  that  the  "  Pomfrets" 
are  coming  back.  Horace  had  known  them  in  Italy.  The 
Earl  and  Countess  and  their  daughters  were  just  then  the 
very  pink  of  fashion ;  and  even  the  leaders  of  all  that  was  ex- 
clusive in  the  court.  Half  in  ridicule,  half  in  earnest,  are  the 
remarks  which,  throughout  all  the  career  of  Horace,  incessant- 
ly occur.  "  I  am  neither  young  enough  nor  old  enough  to  be 
in  love,"  he  says ;  yet  that  he  was  in  love  with  one  of  the  love- 
ly Fermors  is  traditionary  still  in  the  family — and  that  tradi- 
tion pointed  at  Lady  Juliana,  the  youngest,,  afterward  mar- 
ried to  Mr.  Penn.  The  Earl  of  Pomfret  had  been  master  of 
the  horse  to  Queen  Caroline :  Lady  Pomfret,  lady  of  the  bed- 
chamber. "  My  Earl,"  as  the  countess  styled  him,  was  ap- 
parently a  supine  subject  to  her  ladyship's  strong  wTill  and 
wrong-headed  ability — which  she,  perhaps,  inherited  from  her 
grandfather,  Judge  Jeffreys ;  she  being  the  daughter  and  heir- 
ess of  that  rash  young  Lord  Jeffreys  who,  in  a  spirit  of  brag- 
gadocia,  stopped  the  funeral  of  Dry  den  on  its  way  to  West- 
minster, promising  a  more  splendid  procession  than  the  poor, 
humble  cortege — a  boast  which  he  never  fulfilled.  Lady  So- 
phia Fermor,  the  eldest  daughter,  who  afterward  became  the 
wife  of  Lord  Carteret,  resembled,  in  beauty,  the  famed  Mis- 
tress Arabella  Fermor,  the  heroine  of  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock." 
Horace  Walpole  admired  Lady  Sophia — whom  he  christened 
Juno — much.  Scarcely  a  letter  drips  from  his  pen — as  a  mod- 
ern novelist  used  to  express  it* — without  some  touch  of  the 
Pomfrets.  Thus  to  Sir  Horace  Mann,  then  a  diplomatist  at 
Florence : 

"  Lady  Pomfret  I  saw  last  night.  Lady  Sophia  has  been  ill 
with  a  cold ;  her  head  is  to  be  "dressed  French,  and  her  body 
*  The  accomplished  novelist,  Mrs.  Gore,  famous  for  her  facility. 


265 

English,  for  which  I  am  sorry,  her  figure  is  so  fine  in  a  robe. 
She  is  full  as  sorry  as  I  am." 

Again,  at  a  ball  at  Sir  Thomas  Robinson's,  where  four-and- 
twenty  couples  danced  country-dances,  in  two  sets,  twelve  and 
twelve,  "there  was  Lady  Sophia,  handsomer  than  ever,  but 
a  little  out  of  humor  at  the  scarcity  of  minuets;"  however,  as 
usual,  dancing  more  than  any  body,  and  as  usual  too,  she  took 
out  what  men  she  liked,  or  thought  the  best  dancers."  .... 
u  We  danced;  for  I  country-danced  till  four,  then  had  tea  and 
coffee,  and  came  home."  Poor  Horace !  Lady  Sophia  was 
not  for  a  younger  son,  however  gay,  talented,  or  rich. 

His  pique  and  resentment  toward  her  mother,  who  had  high- 
er views  for  her  beautiful  daughter,  begins  at  this  period  to 
show  itself,  and  never  dies  away. 

Lady  Townshend  was  the  wit  who  used  to  gratify  Horace 
with  tales  of  her  whom  he  hated — Henrietta  Louisa,  Countess 
of  Pomfret. 

"  Lady  Townshend  told  me  an  admirable  history :  it  is  of 
our  friend  Lady  Pomfret.  Somebody  that  belonged  to  the 
Prince  of  Wales  said,  they  were  going  to  court ;  it  was  ob- 
j£cted  that"  they  ought  to  say  to  Carlton  House;  that  the  only 
court  is  where  the  king  resides.  Lady  P.,  with  her  paltry 
air  of  significant  learning  and  absurdity,  said,  c  Oh,  Lord !  is 
there  no  court  in  England  but  the  king's  ?  Sure,  there  are 
many  more  !  There  is  the  Court  of  Chancery,  the  Court  of 
Exchequer,  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  etc.'  Don't  you  love 
her  ?  Lord  Lincoln  does  her  daughter — Lady  Sophia  Fer- 
mor.  He  is  come  over,  and  met  me  and  her  the  other  night ; 
he  turned  pale,  spoke  to  her  several  times  in  the  evening,  but 
not  long,  and  sighed  to  me  at  going  away.  He  came  over  all 
alone  ;  and  not  only  his  Uncle  Duke  (the  Duke  of  Newcastle) 
but  even  Majesty  is  fallen  in  love  with  him.  He  talked  to  the 
king  at  his  levee,  without  being  spoken  to.  That  was  always 
thought  high  treason ;  but  I  don't  know  how  the  gruff  gentle- 
man liked  it.  And  then  he  had  been  told  that  Lord  Lincoln 
designed  to  have  made  the  campaign,  if  we  had  gone  to  war ; 
in  short,  he  says  Lord  Lincoln  is  the  handsomest  man  in  En- 
gland." 

Horace  was  not,  therefore,  the  only  victim  to  a  mother's 
ambition  :  there  is  something  touching  in  the  interest  he  from 
time  to  time  evinces  in  poor  Lord  Lincoln's  hopeless  love.  On 
another  occasion,  a  second  bah1  of  Sir  Thomas  Robinson's,  Lord 
Lincoln,  out  of  prudence,  dances  with  Lady  Caroline  Fitzroy, 
Mr.  Conway  taking  Lady  Sophia  Fermor.  "  The  two  couple 
were  just  admirably  mismatched,  as  every  body  soon  perceived, 
by  the  attentions  of  each  man  to  the  woman  he  did  not  dance 

M 


266  POLITICAL   SQUIBS. 

with,  and  the  emulation  of  either  lady :  it  was  an  admirable 
scene." 

All,  however,  was  not  country  dancing :  the  young  man, 
"  too  old  and  too  young  to  be  in  love,"  was  to  make  his  way 
as  a  wit.  He  did  so,  in  the  approved  way  in  that  day  of  irre- 
ligion,  in  a  political  squib.  On  July  14th,  1742,  he  writes  in 
his  Notes,  "I  wrote  the  '  Lessons  for  the  Day  /'  the  'Lessons 
for  the  Day'  being  the  first  and  second  chapters  of  the  '  Book 
of  Preferment.' "  Horace  was  proud  of  this  brochure,  for  he 
says  it  got  about  surreptitiously,  and  was  "the  original  of 
many  things  of  that  sort."  Various  jeux  d1  esprit  of  a  similar 
sort  followed.  A  "  Sermon  on  Painting,"  which  was  preached 
before  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  in  the  gallery  at  Houghton,  by 
his  chaplain ;  "  Patapan,  or  the  Little  White  Dog,"  imitated 
from  La  Fontaine.  No.  38  of  the  "  Old  England  Journal," 
intended  to  ridicule  Lord  Bath ;  and  then,  in  a  magazine,  was 
printed  his  "  Scheme  for  a  Tax  on  Message  Cards  and  Notes." 
Next,  the  "  Beauties,"  which  was  also  handed  about,  and  got 
into  print.  So  that  without  the  vulgarity  of  publishing,  the 
reputation  of  the  dandy  writer  was  soon  noised  about.  His 
religious  tenets  may  or  may  not  have  been  sound ;  but  at  all 
events  the  tone  of  his  mind  assumed  at  this  time  a  very  differ- 
ent character  to  that  reverent  strain  in  which,  when  a  youth 
at  college,  he  had  apostrophized  those  who  bowed  their  heads 
beneath  the  vaulted  roof  of  King's  College,  in  his  eulogium  in 
the  character  of  Henry  VI. 

"Ascend  the  temple,  join  the  vocal  choir, 
Let  harmony  your  raptured  souls  inspire. 
Hark  how  the  tuneful,  solemn  organs  blow, 
Awfully  strong,  elaborately  slow ; 
Now  to  yon  empyrean  seats  above 
Raise  meditation  on  the  wings  of  love. 
Now  falling,  sinking,  dying  to  the  moan 
Once  warbled  sad  by  Jesse's  contrite  son ; 
Breathe  in  each  note  a  conscience  through  the  sense, 
And  call  forth  tears  from  soft-eyed  Penitence." 

In  the  midst  of  all  his  gayeties,  his  successes,  and  perhaps 
his  hopes,  a  cloud  hovered  over  the  destinies  of  his  father. 
The  opposition,  Horace  saw,  in  1741,  wished  to  ruin  his  father 
"  by  ruining  his  constitution."  They  wished  to,  continue  their 
debates  on  Saturdays,  Sir  Robert's  only  day  of  rest,  when  he 
used  to  rush  to  Richmond  New  Park,  there  to  amuse  himself 
with  a  favorite  pack  of  beagles.  Notwithstanding  the  minis- 
ter's indifference  to  this,  his  youngest  son,  Horace,  felt  bitterly 
what  he  considered  a  persecution  against  one  of  the  most  cor- 
rupt of  modern  statesmen. 

"  Trust  me,  if  we  fall,  all  the  grandeur,  all  the  envied  grand- 


THAT  "KOGUE  WALPOLE."  267 

eur  of  our  house,  will  not  cost  me  a  sigh :  it  has  given  me  no 
pleasure  while  we  have  it,  and  will  give  me  no  pain  when  I  part 
with  it.  My  liberty,  my  ease,  and  choice  of  my  own  friends 
and  company,  will  sufficiently  counterbalance  the  crowds  of 
Downing  Street.  I  am  so  sick  of  it  all,  that  if  we  are  victori- 
ous or  not,  I  propose  leaving  England  in  the  spring." 

The  struggle  was  not  destined  to  last  long.  Sir  Robert 
was  forced  to  give  up  the  contest  and  be  shelved  with  a  peer- 
age. In  1742,  he  was  created  Earl  of  Orford,  and  resigned. 
The  wonder  is  that,  with  a  mortal  internal  disease  to  contend 
with,  he  should  have  faced  his  foes  so  long.  Verses  ascribed 
to  Lord  Hervey  ended,  as  did  all  the  squibs  of  the  day,  with  a 
fling  at  that  "  rogue  Walpole." 

"For  though  you  have  made  that  rogue  Walpole  retire, 
You  are  out  of  the  frying-pan  into  the  fire : 
But  since  to  the  Protestant  line  I'm  a  friend, 
I  tremble  to  think  how  these  changes  may  end." 

Horace,  in  spite  of  affected  indifference,  felt  his  father's 
downfall  poignantly.  He  went,  indeed,  to  court,  in  spite  of 
a  cold,  taken  in  an  unaired  house ;  for  the  prime  minister  now 
quitted  Downing  Street  for  Arlington  Street.  The  court  was 
crowded,  he  found,  with  old  ladies,  the  wives  of  patriots  who 
had  not  been  there  for  "these  twenty  years,"  and  who  appeared 
in  the  accoutrements  that  were  in  vogue  in  Queen  Anne's  time. 
"  Then,"  he  writes,  "  the  joy  and  awkward  jollity  of  them  is  in- 
expressible !  They  titter,  and,  wherever  you  meet  them,  are 
always  looking  at  their  watches  an  hour  before  the  time.  I 
met  several  on  the  birthday  (for  I  did  not  arrive  time  enough 
to  make  clothes),  and  they  were  dressed  in  all  the  colors  of  the 
rainbow.  They  seem  to  have  said  to  themselves,  twenty  years 
ago,  'Well,  if  ever  I  do  go  to  court  again,  I  will  have  a  pink 
and  silver,  or  a  blue  and  silver ;'  and  they  keep  their  resolu- 
tions." 

Another  characteristic  anecdote  betrays  his  ill-suppressed 
vexation  : 

"I  laughed  at  myself  prodigiously  the  other  day  for  a  piece 
of  absence.  I  was  writing,  on  the  king's  birthday,  and  being 
disturbed  with  the  mob  in  the  street,  I  rang  for  the  porter, 
and  with  an  air -of  grandeur,  as  if  I  was  still  at^Downing  Street, 
cried, 'Pray  send  away  those  marrow-bones  and  cleavers!' 
The  poor  fellow,  with  the  most  mortified  air  in  the  world,  re- 

i •      i      /  ri*          .  i  -i  ^ 


ne  uoes  not  aisiiKe  ine  noise :      i  pity  tne  poor  poi 
sees  all  his  old  customers  going  over  the  way  too." 

The  retirement  of  Sir  Robert  from  office  had  an  important 


268  THE   SPLENDID   MANSION    OF   HOUGHTON. 

effect  on  the  tastes  and  future  life  of  his  son  Horace.  The  min- 
ister had  been  occupying  his  later  years  in  pulling  down  his  old 
ancestral  house  at  Houghton,  and  in  building  an  enormous  man- 
sion, which  has  since  his  time  been,  in  its  turn,  partially  demol- 
ished. When  Harley,  Earl  of  Oxford,  was  known  to  be  erect- 
ing a  great  house  for  himself,  Sir  Robert  had  remarked  that  a 
minister  who  did  so  committed  a  great  imprudence.  When 
Houghton  was  begun,  Sir  Hynde  Aston  reminded  Sir  Robert 
of  this  speech.  "  You  ought  to  have  recalled  it  to  me  before," 
was  the  reply ;  "  for  before  I  began  building,  it  might  have 
been  of  use  to  me." 

This  famous  memorial  of  Walpolean  greatness,  this  splendid 
folly,  constructed,  it  is  generally  supposed,  on  public  money, 
was  inhabited  by  Sir  Robert  only  ten  days  in  summer,  and 
twenty  days  in  winter ;  in  the  autumn,  during  the  shooting 
season,  two  months.  It  became  almost  an  eyesore  to  the  quiet 
gentry,  who  viewed  the  palace  with  a  feeling  of  their  own  in- 
feriority. People  as  good  as  the  Walpoles  lived  in  their  ga- 
ble-ended, moderate-sized  mansions  ;  and  who  was  Sir  Robert, 
to  set  them  at  so  immense  a  distance  ? 

To  the  vulgar  comprehension  of  the  Premier,  Houghton,  gi- 
gantic in  its  proportions,  had  its  purposes.  He  there  assem- 
bled his  supporters ;  there,  for  a  short  time,  he  entertained  his 
constituents  and  coadjutors  with  a  magnificent,  jovial  hospi- 
tality, of  which  he,  with  his  gay  spirits,  his  humorous,  indeli- 
cate jokes,  and  his  unbounded  good-nature,  was  the  very  soul. 
Free  conversation,  hard  drinking,  were  the  features  of  every 
day's  feast.  Pope  thus  describes  him : 

"  Seen  him,  I  have,  but  in  his  happier  hour, 
Of  social  pleasure,  ill  exchanged  for  power ; 
Seen  him  uneuinbered  with  the  venal  tribe, 
Smile  without  art,  and  win  without  a  bribe." 

Amid  the  coarse  taste  one  gentle  refinement  existed :  this 
was  the  love  of  gardening,  both  in  its  smaller  compass  and  in 
its  nobler  sense  of  landscape  gardening.  "  This  place,"  Sir 
Robert,  in  1743,  wrote  to  General  Churchill,  from  Houghton, 
"  affords  no  news,  no  subject  of  entertainment  or  amusement ; 
for  fine  men  of  wit  and  pleasure  about  town  understand  nei- 
ther the  language  and  taste,  nor  the  pleasure  of  the  inanimate 
world.  My  flatterers  here  are  all  mutes :  the  oaks,  the  beech- 
es, the  chestnuts,  seem  to  contend  which  best  shall  please  the 
lord  of  the  manor.  They  can  not  deceive ;  they  will  not  lie. 
I  in  sincerity  admire  them,  and  have  as  many  beauties  about 
me  as  fill  up  all  my  hours  of  dangling,  and  no  disgrace  attend- 
ing me,  from  sixty-seven  years  of  age.  Within  doors  we  come 
a  little  nearer  to  real  life,  and  admire,  upon  the  almost  speak- 


GEANDES   TOURS."  269 

ino-  canvas,  all  the  airs  and  graces  the  proudest  ladies  can 
boast." 

In  these  pursuits  Horace  cordially  shared.  Through  his 
agency,  Horace  Mann,  still  at  Florence,  selected  and  purchased 
works  of  art,  which  were  sent  either  to  Arlington  Street,  or 
to  form  the  famous  Houghton  Collection,  to  which  Horace  so 
often  refers  in  that  delightful  work,  his  "  Anecdotes  of  Paint- 
ing." 

Among  the  embellishments  of  Houghton,  the  gardens  were 
the  most  expensive. 

"  Sir  Robert  has  pleased  himself,"  Pulteney,  Earl  of  Bath, 
wrote,  "  with  erecting  palaces  and  extending  parks,  planting 
gardens  in  places  to  which  the  very  earth  was  to  be  trans- 
ported in  carriages,  and  embracing  cascades  and  fountains 
whose  water  was  only  to  be  obtained  by  aqueducts  and  ma- 
chines, and  imitating  the  extravagance  of  Oriental  monarchs, 
at  the  expense  of  a  free  people  whom  he  has  at  once  impover- 
ished and  betrayed." 

The  ex-minister  went  to  a  great  expense  in  the  cultivation 
of  plants,  bought  Uvedale's  "  Hortus  Siccus ;"  and  received 
from  Bradley,  the  Professor  of  Botany  at  Cambridge,  the  trib- 
ute of  a  dedication,  in  which  it  was  said  that  "  Sir  Robert  had 
purchased  one  of  the  finest  collections  of  plants  in  the  king- 
dom." 

What  was  more  to  his  honor  still,  was  Sir  Robert's  preser- 
vation of  St.  James's  Park  for  the  people.  Fond  of  out-door 
amusements  himself,  the  Premier  heard,  with  dismay,  a  pro- 
posal on  the  part  of  Queen  Caroline,  to  convert  that  ancient 
park  into  a  palace  garden.  "  She  asked  my  father,"  Horace 
Walpole  relates,  "what  the  alteration  might  possibly  cost." 
"  Only  three  crowns"  was  the  civil,  witty,  candid  answer.  The 
queen  was  wise  enough  to  take  the  hint.  It  is  possible  she 
meant  to  convert  the  park  into  gardens  that  should  be  open  to 
the  public  as  at  Berlin,  Manheim,  and  even  the  Tuileries.  Still 
it  would  not  have  been  ours. 

Horace  Walpole  owed,  perhaps,  his  love  of  architecture  and 
his  taste  for  gardening,  partly  to  the  early  companionship  of 
Gray,  who  delighted  in  those  pursuits.  Walpole's  estimation 
of  pictures,  medals,  and  statues,  was  however  the  fruit  of  a 
long  residence  abroad.  We  are  apt  to  rail  at  continental  na- 
tions ;  yet  had  it  not  been  for  the  occasional  intercourse  with 
foreign  nations,  art  would  have  altogether  died  out  among  us. 
To  the  "  Grandes  Tours,"  performed  as  a  matter  of  course  by 
our  young  nobility  in  the  most  impressionable  period  of  their 
lives,  we  owe  most  of  our  noble  private  collections.  Charles  I. 
and  Buckingham,  renewed,  in  their  travels  in  Spain,  the  efforts 


270  GEORGE  VEETUE. 

previously  made  by  Lord  Arundel  and  Lord  Pembroke,  to 
embellish  their  country  seats.  Then  came  the  rebellion  ;  and 
like  a  mighty  rushing  river,  made  a  chasm  in  which  much  per- 
ished. Art  languished  in  the  reign  of  the  second  Charles,  ex- 
cepting in  what  related  to  portrait-painting.  Evelyn  stood  al- 
most alone  in  his  then  secluded  and  lovely  retirement  at  Wot- 
ton ;  apart  in  his  undying  exertions  still  to  arrest  the  Muses 
ere  they  quitted  forever  English  shores.  Then  came  the  dead- 
ly blank  of  William's  icy  influence.  The  reign  of  Anne  was 
conspicuous  more  for  letters  than  for  art :  architecture,  more 
especially,  was  vulgarized  under  Vanbrugh.  George  I.  had 
no  conception  of  any  thing  abstract :  taste,  erudition,  science, 
art,  were  like  a  dead  language  to  his  common  sense,  his  vulgar 
profligacy,  and  his  personal  predilections.  Neither  George  II. 
nor  his  queen  had  an  iota  of  taste,  either  in  language,  conduct, 
literature,  or  art.  To  be  vulgar  was  haut  ton  ;  to  be  refined, 
to  have  pursuits  that  took  one  from  low  party  gossip,  or  hete- 
rodox disquisitions  upon  party,  was  esteemed  odd :  everything 
original  was  cramped ;  every  thing  imaginative  was  sneered 
at ;  the  enthusiasm  that  is  elevated  by  religion  was  unphilo- 
sophic;  the  poetry  that  is  breathed  out  from  the  works  of 
genius  was  not  comprehended. 

It  was  at  Houghton,  under  the  roof  of  that  monster  palace, 
that  Horace  Walpole  indulged  that  taste  for  pictures  which  he 
had  acquired  in  Italy.  His  chief  coadjutor,  however,  as  far 
as  the  antiquities  of  painting  are  concerned,  was  George  Ver- 
tue,  the  eminent  engraver.  Vertue  was  a  man  of  modest 
merit,  and  was  educated  merely  as  an  engraver ;  but,  con- 
scious of  talent,  studied  drawing,  which  he  afterward  applied 
to  engraving.  He  was  patronized  both  by  the  vain  Godfrey 
Kueller,  and  by  the  intellectual  Lord  Somers :  his  works  have 
more  fidelity  than  elegance,  and  betray  in  every  line  the  anti- 
quary rather  than  the  genius.  Vertue  was  known  to  be  a  first- 
rate  authority  as  to  the  history  of  a  painter  ;  he  was  admitted 
and  welcomed  into  every  great  country  house  in  England ;  he 
lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  vertu ;  every  line  a  dilettante  col- 
lector wrote,  every  word  he  uttered,  was  minuted  down  by 
him ;  he  visited  every  collection  of  rarities ;  he  copied  every 
paper  he  could  find  relative  to  art ;  registers  of  wills  and  reg- 
isters of  parishes,  for  births  and  deaths  were  his  delight ;  sales 
his  recreation.  He  was  the  "  Old  Mortality"  of  pictures  in  this 
country.  No  wonder  that  his  compilations  were  barely  con- 
tained in  forty  volumes,  which  he  left  in  manuscript.  Human 
nature  has  singular  varieties  :  here  was  a  man  who  expended 
his  very  existence  in  gathering  up  the  works  of  others,  and 
died  without  giving  to  the  world  one  of  his  own.  But  Horace 


MEN    OF   ONE   IDEA.  271 

Walpole  has  done  him  justice.  After  Yertue's  death  he 
bought  his  manuscripts  from  his  widow.  In  one  of  his  pock- 
et-books was  contained  the  whole  history  of  this  man  of  one 
idea.  Vertue  began  his  collection  in  1713,  and  worked  at  it 
until  his  death  in  1757,  forty-four  years. 

He  died  in  the  belief  that  he  should  one  day  publish  an 
unique  work  on  painting  and  painters :  such  was  the  aim  of  his 
existence,  and  his  study  must  have  been  even  more  curious 
than  the  wonderfully  crammed  small  house  at  Islington,  where 
William  Upcott,  the  "  Old  Mortality"  in  his  line,  who  saved 
from  the  housemaid's  fire-lighting  designs  the  MSS.  of  Eve- 
lyn's Life  and  Letters,  which  he  found  tossing  about  in  the  old 
gallery  at  Wotton,  near  Dorking,  passed  his  days.  Like  Up- 
cott, like  Palissy,  Yertue  lived  and  died  under  the  influence  of 
one  isolated  aim,  effort,  and  hope. 

In  these  men  the  cherished  and  amiable  monomania  of  gift- 
ed minds  was  realized.  Upcott  had  every  possible  autograph 
from  every  known  hand  in  his  collection ;  Palissy  succeeded 
in  making  glazed  china ;  but  Yertue  left  his  ore  to  the  hands 
of  others  to  work  out  into  shape,  and  the  man  who  moulded 
his  crude  materials  was  Horace  Walpole.  His  forty  volumes 
were  shaped  into  a  readable  work,  as  curious  and  accurate  in 
facts  as  it  is  flippant  and  prejudiced  in  style  and  opinions. 

Walpole's  "  Anecdotes  of  Painting"  are  the  foundation  of 
all  our  small  amount  of  knowledge  as  to  what  England  has 
done  formerly  to  encourage  art. 

One  may  fancy  the  modest,  ingenious  George  Yertue  ar- 
ranging first,  and  then  making  a  catalogue  of  the  Houghton 
Gallery :  Horace,  a  boy  still,  in  looks,  with  a  somewhat  chub- 
by face,  admiring  and  following :  Sir  Robert,  in  a  cocked  hat, 
edged  with  silver  lace,  a  curled  short  wig,  a  loose  coat,  also 
edged  with  silver  lace,  and  with  a  half-humorous  expression 
on  his  vulgar  countenance,  watching  them  at  intervals,  as  they 
paraded  through  the  hall,  a  large  square  space,  adorned  with 
bas-reliefs  and  busts,  and  containing  a  bronze  copy  of  the  Lao- 
coon,  for  which  Sir  Robert  (or  rather  we  English)  paid  a 
thousand  pounds ;  or  they  might  be  seen  hopping  speedily 
through  the  ground-floor  apartments  where  there  could  be  lit- 
tle to  arrest  the  footsteps  of  the  medieval-minded  Yertue. 
Who  but  a  courtier  could  give  one  glance  to  a  portrait  of 
George  I.,  though  by  Kneller  ?  Who  that  was  a  courtier  in 
that  house  would  pause  to  look  at  the  resemblance,  also  by 
Kneller,  of  the  short-lived,  ill-used  Catherine  Shorter,  the  Prem- 
ier's first  wife — even  though  he  still  endured  it  in  his  bed- 
room ?•  a  mute  reproach  for  his  neglect  and  misconduct.  So 
let  us  hasten  to  the  yellow  dining-room  where  presently  we 


272  THE   NOBLE   PICTURE-GALLEKY    AT   HOUGHTON. 

may  admire  the  works  of  Titian,  Guido,  Vanderwerf,  and  last, 
not  least,  eleven  portraits  by  Vandyck,  of  the  Wharton  fami- 
ly, which  Sir  Robert  bought  at  the  sale  of  the  spendthrift 
Duke  of  Wharton. 

Then  let  us  glance  -at  the  saloon,  famed  for  the  four  large 
"Market  Pieces,"  as  they  were  called,  by  Rubens  and  Sny- 
ders :  let  us  lounge  into  what  were  called  the  Carlo  Maratti 
and  the  Yandyck  rooms;  step  we  also  into  the  green  velvet 
bed-chamber,  the  tapestry-room,  the  worked  bed-chamber ;  then 
comes  another  dining-room :  in  short,  we  are  lost  in  wonder 
at  this  noble  collection,  which  cost  £40,000. 

Many  of  the  pictures  were  selected  and  bargained  for  by 
Vertue,  who,  in  Flanders,  purchased  the  Market  Pieces  re- 
ferred to,  for  £428 ;  but  did  not  secure  the  "  Fish  Market," 
and  the  "  Meat  Market,"  by  the  same  painter.  In  addition  to 
the  pictures,  the  stateliness  and  beauty  of  the  rooms  were  en- 
hanced by  rich  furniture,  carving,  gilding,  and  all  the  subsidiary 
arts  which  our  grandfathers  loved  to  add  to  high  merit  in  de- 
sign or  coloring.  Besides  his  purchases,  Sir  Robert  received 
presents  of  pictures  from  friends,  and  expectant  courtiers ;  and 
the  gallery  at  Houghton  contained  at  last  222  pictures.  To 
our  sorrow  now,  to  our  disgrace  then,  this  splendid  collection 
was  suffered  to  go  out  of  the  country :  Catherine,  Empress  of 
Russia,  bought  it  for  £40,000,  and  it  adorns  the  Hermitage 
Palace  of  St.  Petersburg. 

After  Sir  Robert's  retirement  from  power,  the  good  qualities 
which  he  undoubtedly  possessed,  seemed  to  reappear  when  the 
pressure  of  party  feeling  was  withdrawn.  He  was  fast  declin- 
ing in  health  when  the  insurrection  of  1745  was  impending. 
He  had  warned  the  country  of  its  danger  in  his  last  speech, 
one  of  the  finest  ever  made  in  the  House  of  Lords :  after  that 
effort  his  voice  was  heard  no  more.  The  gallant,  unfortunate 
Charles  Edward  was  then  at  Paris,  and  that  scope  of  old  ex- 
perience 

"Which  doth  attain 
To  somewhat  of  prophetic  strain, " 

showed  the  ex-minister  of  Great  Britain  that  an  invasion  was 
at  hand.  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  Frederick,  Prince  of 
Wales,  took  Sir  Robert,  then  Lord  Orford,  by  the  hand,  and 
thanked  him  for  his  zeal  in  the  cause  of  the  royal  family. 
Walpole  returned  to  Norfolk,  but  was  summoned  again  to 
London  to  afford  the  ministry  the  benefit  of  his  counsels. 
Death,  however,  closed  his  prosperous  but  laborious  life.  He 
suffered  agonies  from  the  stone ;  large  doses  of  opium  kept 
him  in  a  state  of  stupor,  and  alone  gave  him  ease ;  but  his 
strength  failed,  and  he  was  warned  to  prepare  himself  for  his 


THE    GKAXVILLK    FACTIOX.  273 

decease.  He  bore  the  announcement  with  great  fortitude,  and 
took  leave  of  his  children  in  perfect  resignation  to  his  doom. 
He  died  on  the  28th  of  March,  1745. 

Horace  Walpole — whatsoever  doubts  may  rest  on  the  fact 
of  his  being  Lord  Orford's  son  or  not — writes  feelingly  and 
naturally  upon  this  event,  and  its  forerunner,  the  agonies  of 
disease.  He  seems,  from  the  following  passages  in  his  letters 
to  Sir  Horace  Mann,  to  have  devoted  himself  incessantly  to 
the  patient  invalid :  on  his  father  having  rallied,  he  thus  ex- 
presses himself: 

"  You  have  heard  from  your  brother  the  reason  of  my  not 
having  written  to  you  so  long.  I  have  been  out  but  twice 
since  my  father  fell  into  this  illness,  which  is  now  near  a 
month,  and  all  that  time  either  continually  in  his  room,  or 
obliged  to  see  multitudes  of  people ;  for  it  is  wonderful  how 
every  body  of  all  kinds  has  affected  to  express  their  concern 
for  him  !  He  has  been  out  of  danger  this  week  ;  but  I  can't 
say  he  mended  at  all  perceptibly  till  these  last  three  days. 
His  spirits  are  amazing,  and  his  constitution  more ;  for  Dr. 
Hulse  said  honestly  from  the  first,  that  if  he  recovered  it 
would  be  from  his  own  strength,  not  from  their  art.  How 
much  more,"  he  adds,  mournfully,  "he  will  ever  recover,  one 
scarce  dare  hope  about ;  for  us/  he  is  greatly  recovered ;  for 
himself—"  He  then  breaks  off. 

A  month  after  we  find  him  thus  referring  to  the  parent  still 
throbbing  in  mortal  agony  on  the  death-bed,  with  no  chance 
of  amendment : 

"  How  dismal  a  prospect  for  him,  with  the  possession  of  the 
greatest  understanding  in  the  world,  not  the  least  impaired, 
to  lie  without  any  use  of  it !  for  to  keep  him  from  pains  and 
restlessness,  he  takes  so  much  opiate  that  he  is  scarce  awake 
four  hours  of  the  four-and-twenty ;  but  I  will  say  no  more  of 
this." 

On  the  29th  of  March  he  again  wrote  to  his  friend  in  the 
following  terms : 

"  I  begged  your  brothers  to  tell  you  what  it  is  impossible 
for  me  to  tell  you.  You  share  in  our  common  loss !  Don't 
expect  me  to  enter  at  all  upon  the  subject.  After  the  melan- 
choly two  months  that  I  have  passed,  and  in  my  situation, 
you  will  not  wonder  I  shun  a  conversation  which  could  not  be 
bounded  by  a  letter,  a  letter  that  would  grow  into  a  panegyric 
or  a  piece  of  a  moral ;  improper  for  me  to  write  upon,  and  too 
distressful  for  us  both  !  a  death  is  only  to  be  felt,  never  to  be 
talked  upon  by  those  it  touches." 

Nevertheless,  the  world  soon  had  Horace  Walpole  for  her 
own  acrain  ;  during  Lord  Orford's  last  illness,  George  II. 

M  -.? 


274  A   VERY    GOOD    QUAEEEL. 

thought  of  him,  it  seems,  even  though  the  "  Granvilles"  were 
the  only  people  tolerated  at  court.  That  famous  clique  com- 
prised the  secretly  adored  of  Horace  (Lady  Grenville  once), 
Lady  Sophia  Fermor. 

"  The  Granville  faction,"  Horace  wrote,  before  his  father's 
death,  "  are  still  the  constant  and  only  countenanced  people 
at  court.  Lord  Winchelsea,  one  of  the  disgraced,  played  at 
court  at  Twelfth-night,  and  won;  the  king  asked  him  next 
morning  how  much  he  had  for  his  own  share.  He  replied, 
'Sir,  about  a  quarter's  salary.'  I  liked  the  spirit,  and  was 
talking  to  him  of  it  the  next  night  at  Lord  Granville's.  '  Why 
yes,'  said  he,  'I  think  it  showed  familiarity  at  least:  tell  it  your 
father,  I  don't  think  he  will  dislike  it.'  " 

The  most  trifling  incidents  divided  the  world  of  fashion  and 
produced  the  bitterest  rancor.  Indeed,  nothing  could  exceed 
the  frivolity  of  the  great,  except  their  impertinence.  For  want 
of  better  amusements,  it  had  become  the  fashion  to  make  co- 
nundrums, and  to  have  printed  books  full  of  them,  which  were 
produced  at  parties.  But  these  were  peaceful  diversions.  The 
following  anecdote  is  worthy  of  the  times  of  George  II.  and  of 
Frederick  of  Wales : 

"  There  is  a  very  good  quarrel,"  Horace  writes,  "  on  foot, 
between  two  duchesses :  she  of  Queensberry  sent  to  invite 
Lady  Emily  Lenox  to  a  ball:  her  grace  of  Richmond,  who  is 
wonderfully  cautious  since  Lady  Caroline's  elopement  (with 
Mr.  Fox),  sent  word  '  she  could  not  determine.'  The  other 
sent  again  the  same  night:  the  same  answer.  The  Queens- 
berry  then  sent  word  that  she  had  made  up  her  company,  and 
desired  to  be  excused  from  having  Lady  Emily's ;  but  at  the 
bottom  of  the  card  wrote,  'Too  great  trust.'  There  is  no  dec- 
laration of  war  come  out  from  the  other  duchess ;  but  I  believe 
it  will  be  made  a  national  quarrel  of  the  whole  illegitimate  roy- 
al family." 

Meantime,  Houghton  was  shut  up :  for  its  owner  died 
£50,000  in  debt,  and  the  elder  brother  of  Horace,  the  second 
Lord  Orford,  proposed,  on  entering  it  again,  after  keeping  it 
closed  for  some  time,  to  enter  upon  "  new,  and  then  very  un- 
known economy,  for  which  there  was  great  need :"  thus  Hor- 
ace refers  to  the  changes. 

It  was  in  the  South  Sea  scheme  that  Sir  Robert  Walpole 
had  realized  a  large  sum  of  money,  by  selling  out  at  the  right 
moment.  In  doing  so  he  had  gained  1000  per  cent.  But  he 
left  little  to  his  family,  and  at  his  death  Horace  received  a  leg- 
acy only  of  £5000,  and  a  thousand  pounds  yearly,  which  he  was 
to  draw  (for  doing  nothing),  from  the  collector's  place  in  the 
Custom  House ;  the  surplus  to  be  divided  between  his  brother 


STRAWBERRY  HILL  FROM  THE  THAMES. 


TWICKENHAM. STRAWBERRY    HILL.  277 

Edward  and  himself:  this  provision  was  afterward  enhanced 
by  some  money  which  came  to  Horace  and  his  brothers  from 
his  uncle  Captain  Snorter's  property ;  but  Horace  was  not  at 
this  period  a  rich  man,  and  perhaps  his  not  marrying  was  ow- 
ing to  his  dislike  of  fortune-hunting,  or  to  his  dread  of  refusal. 

Two  years  after  his  father's  death  he  took  a  small  house  at 
Twickenham:  the  property  cost  him  nearly  £14,000;  in  the 
deeds  he  found  that  it  was  called  Strawberry  Hill.  He  soon 
commenced  making  considerable  additions  to  the  house — which 
became  a  sort  of  raree-show  in  the  latter  part  of  the  last,  and 
until  a  late  period  in  this,  century. 

Twickenham  —  so  called,  according  to  the  antiquary  'Nor- 
den,  because  the  Thames,  as  it  flows  near  it,  seems  from  the 
islands  to  be  divided  into  two  rivers — had  long  been  celebra- 
ted for  its  gardens,  when  Horace  Walpole,  the  generalissimo  of 
all  bachelors,  took  Strawberry  Hill.  "Twicknam  is  as  much 
as  Twynam,"  declares  Norden,  "a  place  scytuate  between  two 
rivers."  So  fertile  a  locality  could  not  be  neglected  by  the 
monks  of  old,  the  great  gardeners  and  tillers  of  land  in  ancient 
days ;  and  the  Manor  of  Twickenham  was  consequently  given 
to  the  monks  of  Christ  Church,  Canterbury,  by  King  Edred, 
in  491 ;  who  piously  inserted  his  anathema  against  any  person 
— whatever  their  rank,  sex,  or  order — who  should  infringe  the 
rights  of  these  holy  men.  "  May  their  memory,"  the  king  de- 
creed, with  a  force  worthy  of  the  excommunicator-wholesale, 
Pius  IX.,  "  be  blotted  out  of  the  Book  of  Life ;  may  their 
strength  continually  waste  away,  and  be  there  no  restorative 
to  repair  it !"  Nevertheless,  there  were  in  the  time  of  Ly- 
sons,  a  hundred  and  fifty  acres  of  fruit-gardens  at  Twicken- 
ham :  the  soil  being  a  sandy  loam,  raspberries  grew  plentifully. 
Even  so  early  as  Queen  Elizabeth's  days,  Bishop  Corbet's  fa- 
ther had  a  nursery -garden  at  Twickenham — so  that  King 
Edred's  curse  seems  to  have  fallen  as  powerlessly  as  it  may  be 
hoped  all  subsequent  maledictions  may  do. 

In  1698,  one  of  the  Earl  of  Bradford's  coachmen  built  a 
small  house  on  a  piece  of  ground,  called  in  old  works,  Straw- 
berry-Hill-Shot ;  lodgings  were  here  let,  and  Colley  Cibber  be- 
came one  of  the  occupants  of  the  place,  and  here  wrote  his 
Comedy  called  "  Refusal ;  or  the  Ladies'  Philosophy."  The 
spot  was  so  greatly  admired  that  Talbot,  Bishop  of  Durham, 
lived  eight  years  in  it,  and  the  Marquis  of  Carnarvon  suc- 
ceeded him  as  a  tenant :  next  came  Mrs.  Chenevix,  a  famous 
toy-woman.  She  was  probably  a  French  woman,  for  Father 
Courayer — he  who  vainly  endeavored  to  effect  a  union  between 
the  English  and  the  Gallican  churches — lodged  here  some  time. 
Horace  Walpole  bought  up  Mrs.  Chenevix's  lease,  and  after- 


278  THE    RECLUSE    OF    STRAWBERRY. 

ward  the  fee-simple ;  and  henceforth  became  the  busiest,  if  not 
the  happiest,  man  in  a  small  way  in  existence. 

We  now  despise  the  poor,  over-ornate  miniature  Gothic 
style  of  Strawberry  Hill ;  we  do  not  consider  with  what  infi- 
nite pains  the  structure  was  enlarged  into  its  final  and  well- 
known  form.  In  the  first  place,  Horace  made  a  tour  to  collect 
models  from  the  chief  cathedral  cities  in  England ;  but  the 
building  required  twenty-three  years  to  complete  it.  It  was 
begun  in  1753,  and  finished  in  1776.  Strawberry  Hill  had  one 
merit,  every  thing  was  in  keeping:  the  internal  decorations, 
the  screens,  the  niches,  the  chimney-pieces,  the  book-shelves, 
were  all  Gothic ;  and  most  of  these  were  designed  by  Horace 
himself;  and,  indeed,  the  description  of  Strawberry  Hill  is  too 
closely  connected  with  the  annals  of  his  life  to  be  dissevered 
from  his  biography.  Here  he  gathered  up  his  mental  forces 
to  support  and  amuse  himself  during  a  long  life,  sometimes 
darkened  by  spleen,  but  rarely  by  solitude ;  for  Horace,  with 
much  isolation  of  the  heart,  was,  to  the  world,  a  social  being. 

What  scandal,  what  trifles,  what  important  events,  what  lit- 
tleness of  mind,  yet  what  stretch  of  intellect  were  henceforth 
issued  by  the  recluse  of  Strawberry,  as  he  plumed  himself  on 
being  styled,  from  that  library  of  "  Strawberry !"  Let  us  pic- 
ture to  ourselves  the  place,  the  persons — put  on,  if  we  can,  the 
sentiments  and  habits  of  the  retreat ;  look  through  its  loop- 
holes, not  only  on  the  wide  world  beyond,  but  into  the  small 
world  within ;  and  face  the  fine  gentleman  author  in  every  pe- 
riod of  his  varied  life. 

"  The  Strawberry  Gazette,"  Horace  once  wrote  to  a  fine  and 
titled  lady,  "  is  very  barren  of  weeds."  Such,  however,  was 
rarely  the  case.  Peers,  and  still  better,  peeresses — politicians, 
actors,  actresses — the  poor  poet  who  knew  not  where  to  dine, 
the  Maecenas  who  was  "fed  with  dedications" — the  belle  of 
the  season,  the  demirep  of  many,  the  antiquary,  and  the  dilet- 
tanti— painters,  sculptors,  engravers,  all  brought  news  to  the 
"  Strawberry  Gazette ;"  and  incense,  sometimes  wrung  from 
aching  hearts,  to  the  fastidious  wit  who  professed  to  be  a 
judge  of  all  material  and  immaterial  things — from  a  burlesque 
to  an  Essay  on  History  or  Philosophy — from  the  construction 
of  Mrs.  Chenevix's  last  new  toy  to  the  mechanism  of  a  clock 
made  in  the  sixteenth  century,  was  lavished  there. 

It  is  noonday :  Horace  is  showing  a  party  of  guests  from 
London  over  Strawberry :  enter  we  with  him,  and  let  us  stand 
in  the  great  parlor  before  a  portrait  by  Wright  of  the  Minister 
to  whom  all  courts  bowed.  "  That  is  my  father,  Sir  Robert, 
in  profile,"  and  a  vulgar  face  in  profile  is  always  seen  at  its 
vulgarest;  and  the  nez-retrousse,  the  coarse  mouth,  the  double 


PORTRAITS   OF   THE   DIGBY    FAMILY.  2*79 

chin,  are  most  forcibly  exhibited  in  this  limning  by  Wright ; 
who  did  not,  like  Reynolds,  or  like  Lawrence,  cast  a  nuance 
of  gentility  over  every  subject  of  his  pencil.  Horace — can  we 
not  hear  him  in  imagination? — is  telling  his  friends  how  Sir 
Robert  used  to  celebrate  the  day  on  which  he  sent  in  his  res- 
ignation, as  a  fete ;  then  he  would  point  out  to  his  visitors  a 
Conversation-piece,  one  of  Reynolds' s  earliest  efforts  in  small 
life,  representing  the  second  Earl  of  Edgecumbe,  Selwyn,  and 
Williams — all  wits  and  beaux,  and  habitues  of  Strawberry. 
Colley  Gibber,  however,  was  put  in  cold  marble  in  the  ante- 
room ;  respect  very  Horatian,  for  no  man  knew  better  how  to 
rank  his  friends  than  the  recluse  of  Strawberry.  He  hurries 
the  lingering  guests  through  the  little  parlor,  the  chimney- 
piece  of  which  was  copied  from  the  tomb  of  Ruthall,  Bishop 
of  Durham,  in  Westminster  Abbey.  Yet  how  he  pauses  com- 
placently to  enumerate  what  has  been  done  for  him  by  titled 
belles :  how  these  dogs,  modeled  in  terra-cotta,  are  the  produc- 
tion of  Anne  Darner ;  a  water-color  drawing  by  Agnes  Berry ; 
a  landscape  with  gipsies  by  Lady  Di  Beauclerk ;  all  platonic- 
ally  devoted  to  our  Horace ;  but  he  dwells  long,  and  his  bright 
eyes  are  lighted  up  as  he  pauses  before  a  case,  looking  as  if  it 
contained  only  a  few  apparently  faded,  of  no-one-knows-who 
(or  by  whom)  miniatures ;  this  is  a  collection  of  Peter  Oliver's 
best  works — portraits  of  the  Digby  family. 

How  sadly,  in  referring  to  these  invaluable  pictures,  does 
one's  mind  revert  to  the  day  when,  before  the  hammer  of 
Robins  had  resounded  in  these  rooms — before  his  transcendent 
eloquence  had  been  heard  at  Strawberry — Agnes  Strickland, 
followed  by  all  eyes,  pondered  over  that  group  of  portraits : 
how,  as  she  slowly  withdrew,  we  of  the  commonalty  scarce 
worthy  to  look,  gathered  around  the  spot  again,  and  wondered 
at  the  perfect  life,  the  perfect  coloring,  proportion,  and  keep- 
ing of  those  tiny  vestiges  of  a  by-gone  generation ! 

Then  Horace — we  fear  it  was  not  till  his  prime  was  past, 
and  a  touch  of  gout  crippled  his  once  active  limbs — points  to  a 
picture  of  Rose,  the  gardener  (well  named),  presenting  Charles 
II.  with  a  pine-apple.  Some  may  murmur  a  doubt  whether 
pine-apples  were  cultivated  in  cold  Britain  so  long  since.  But 
Horace  enforces  the  fact ;  "  the  likeness  of  the  king,"  quoth 
he,  "  is  too  marked,  and  his  features  are  too  well  known  to 
doubt  the  fact ;"  and  then  he  tells  "  how  he  had  received  a 
present  the  last  Sunday  of  fruit — and  from  "whom." 

They  pause  next  on  Sir  Peter  Lely's  portrait  of  Cowley — 
next  on  Hogarth's  Sarah  Malcolm,  the  murderess  of  her  mis- 
tress ;  then — and  doubtless,  the  spinster  ladies  are  in  fault  here 
for  the  delay — on  Mrs.  Darner's  model  of  two  kittens,  pets, 


280  MRS.  DAMER'S  MODELS. 

though,  of  Horace  Walpole's — for  he  who  loved  few  human 
beings  was,  after  the  fashion  of  bachelors,  fond  of  cats. 

They  ascend  the  staircase :  the  domestic  adornments  merge 
into  the  historic.  We  have  Francis  I. — not  himself,  but  his 
armor ;  the  chimney-piece,  too,  is  a  copy  from  the  tomb-works 
of  John,  Earl  of  Cornwall,  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  the  stone- 
work from  that  of  Thomas,  Duke  of  Clarence,  at  Canterbury. 

Stay  a  while :  we  have  not  done  with  sacrilege  yet ;  worse 
things  are  to  be  told,  and  we  walk  with  consciences  not  un- 
scathed into  the  Library,  disapproving  in  secret  but  flattering 
vocally.  Here  the  very  spirit  of  Horace  seemed  to  those  who 
visited  Strawberry  before  its  fall  to  breathe  in  every  corner. 
Alas !  when  we  beheld  that  library,  it  was  half  filled  with 
chests  containing  the  MSS.  of  his  letters ;  which  were  bought 
by  that  enterprising  publisher  of  learned  name,  Richard  Bent- 
ley,  and  which  have  since  had  adequate  justice  done  them  by 
first-rate  editors.  There  they  were  :  the  "  Strawberry  Gazette" 
in  full ;  one  glanced  merely  at  the  yellow  paper,  and  clear,  de- 
cisive hand,  and  then  turned  to  see  what  objects  he,  who  loved 
his  books  so  well,  collected  for  his  especial  gratification.  Mrs. 
Darner  again !  how  proud  he  was  of  her  genius — her  beauty, 
her  cousinly  love  for  himself;  the  wise  way  in  which  she  bound 
up  the  wounds  of  her  breaking  heart  when  her  profligate  hus- 
band shot  himself,  by  taking  to  occupation — perhaps,  too,  by 
liking  cousin  Horace  indifferently  well.  He  put  her  models 
forward  in  every  place.  Here  was  her  Osprey  Eagle  in  terra- 
cotta, a  masterly  production ;  there  a  couvre-fire,  or  cur-few, 
imitated  and  modeled  by  her.  Then  the  marriage  of  Henry 
VI.  figures  on  the  wall :  near  the  fire  is  a  screen  of  the  first 
tapestry  ever  made  in  England,  representing  a  map  of  Surrey 
and  Middlesex ;  a  notion  of  utility  combined  with  ornament, 
which  we  see  still  exhibited  in  the  Sampler  in  old-fashioned, 
middle-class  houses ;  that  poor  posthumous,  base-born  child 
of  the  tapestry,  almost  defunct  itself;  and  a  veritable  piece  of 
antiquity. 

Still  more  remarkable  in  this  room  was  a  quaint-faced  clock, 
silver  gilt,  given  by  Henry  VIII.  to  Anne  Boleyn ;  which  per- 
chance, after  marking  the  moments  of  her  festive  life,  struck 
unfeelingly  the  hour  of  her  doom. 

But  the  company  are  hurrying  into  a  little  ante-room,  the 
ceiling  of  which  is  studded  with  stars  in  mosaic ;  it  is  there- 
fore called  jocularly,  the  "  Star  Chamber ;"  and  here  stands  a 
cast  of  the  famous  bust  of  Henry  VII.,  by  Torregiano,  intend- 
ed for  the  tomb  of  that  sad-faced,  long-visaged  monarch,  who 
always  looks  as  if  royalty  had  disagreed  with  him. 

Next  we  enter  the  Holbein  Chamber.     Horace  hated  bish- 


THE   LONG    GALLERY    AT   STRAWBERRY.  281 

ops  and  archbishops,  and  all  the  hierarchy ;  yet  here  again  we 
behold  another  prelatical  chimney-piece — a  frieze  taken  from 
the  tomb  of  Archbishop  Warham,  at  Canterbury.  And  here, 
in  addition  to  Holbein's  picture  of  Mary  Tudor,  Duchess  of 
Suffolk,  and  of  her  third  husband,  Adrian  Stokes,  are  Yertue's 
copies  of  Holbein,  drawings  of  that  great  master's  pictures  in 
Buckingham  House :  enough — let  us  "hasten  into  the  Long  Gal- 
lery. Those  who  remember  Sir  Samuel  Merrick  and  his  gal- 
lery at  Goodrich  Court  will  have  traced  in  his  curious,  some- 
what gewgaw  collections  of  armor,  antiquities,  faded  portraits, 
and  mock  horses,  much  of  the  taste  and  turn  of  mind  that  ex- 
isted in  Horace  Walpole. 

The  gallery,  which  all  who  recollect  the  sale  at  Strawberry 
Hill  must  remember  with  peculiar  interest,  sounded  well  on 
paper.  It  was  56  feet  long,  17  high,  and  13  wide;  yet  was 
neither  long  enough,  high  enough,  nor  wide  enough  to  inspire 
the  indefinable  sentiment  by  which  we  acknowledge  vastness. 
We  beheld  it  the  scene  of  George  Robins's  triumphs — crowd- 
ed to  excess.  Here  strolled  Lord  John  Russell ;  there,  with 
heavy  tread,  walked  Daniel  O'Connell.  Hallam,  placid,  kind- 
ly, gentle — the  prince  of  book-worms — moved  quickly  through 
the  rooms,  pausing  to  raise  a  glance  to  the  ceiling — copied 
from  one  of  the  side  aisles  of  Henry  YII.'s  Chapel — but  the 
fretwork  is  gilt,  and  there  is  apetitesse  about  the  Gothic  which 
disappoints  all  good  judges. 

But  when  Horace  conducted  his  courtly  guests  into  this  his 
mind-vaunted  vaulted,  gallery,  he  had  sometimes  George  Sel- 
wyn  at  his  side ;  or  Gray — in  his  gracious  moods ;  or,  in  his 
old  age,  "  my  niece,  the  Duchess  of  Gloucester,"  leaned  on  his 
arm.  What  strange  associations,  what  brilliant  company ! — 
the  associations  can  never  be  recalled  there  again;  nor  the 
company  reassembled.  The  gallery,  like  every  thing  else,  has 
perished  under  the  pressure  of  debt.  He  who  was  so  par- 
ticular, too,  as  to  the  number  of  those  who  were  admitted  to 
see  his  house — he  who  stipulated  that  four  persons  only  should 
compose  a  party,  and  one  party  alone  be  shown  over  each  day 
— how  would  he  have  borne  the  crisis,  could  he  have  foreseen 
it,  when  Robins  became,  for  the  time,  his  successor,  and  was 
the  temporary  lord  of  Strawberry;  the  dusty,  ruthless,  won- 
dering, depreciating  mob  of  brokers — the  respectable  host  of 
publishers — the  starving  army  of  martyrs,  the  authors — the 
fine  ladies,  who  saw  nothing  there  comparable  to  Howell  and 
James's — the  antiquaries,  fishing  out  suspicious  antiquities — 
the  painters,  clamorous  over  Kneller's  profile  of  Mrs.  Barry — 
the  virtuous  indignant  mothers,  as  they  passed  by  the  por- 
traits of  the  Duchess  de  la  Valliere,  and  of  Ninon  de  1'Enclos, 


282  THE   CHAPEL. 

and  remarked,  or  at  all  events  they  might  have  remarked,  that 
the  company  on  the  floor  was  scarcely  much  more  respectable 
than  the  company  on  the  walls — the  fashionables,  who  herded 
together,  impelled  by  caste,  that  free-masonry  of  social  life,  en- 
ter the  Beauclerk  closet  to  look  over  Lady  Di's  scenes  from 
the  "  Mysterious  Mother" — the  players  and  dramatists,  finally, 
who  crowded  round  Hogarth's  sketch  of  his  "Beggars'  Opera," 
with  portraits,  and  gazed  on  Davison's  likeness  of  Mrs.  Clive: 
how  could  poor  Horace  have  tolerated  the  sound  of  their  ir- 
reverent remarks,  the  dust  of  their  shoes,  the  degradation  of 
their  fancying  that  they  might  doubt  his  spurious-looking 
antiquities,  or  condemn  his  improper-looking  ladies  on  their 
canvas  ?  How,  indeed,  could  he  ?  For  those  parlors,  that 
library,  were  peopled  in  his  days  with  all  those  who  could  en- 
hance his  pleasures,  or  add  to  their  own,  by  their  presence. 
When  Poverty  stole  in  there,  it  was  irradiated  by  Genius. 
When  painters  hovered  beneath  the  fretted  ceiling  of  that 
library,  it  was.  to  thank  the  oracle  of  the  day,  not  always  for 
large  orders,  but  for  powerful  recommendations.  When  act- 
resses trod  the  Star  Chamber,  it  was  as  modest  friends,  not  as 
audacious  critics  on  Horace,  his  house,  and  his  pictures. 

Before  we  call  up  the  spirits  that  were  familiar  at  Straw- 
berry— ere  we  pass  through  the  garden-gate,  the  piers  of 
which  were  copied  from  the  tomb  of  Bishop  William  de  Luda, 
in  Ely  Cathedral — let  us  glance  at  the  chapel,  and  then  a  word 
or  two  about  Walpole's  neighbors  and  anent  Twickenham. 

The  front  of  the  chapel  was  copied  from  Bishop  Audley's 
tomb  at  Salisbury.  Four  panels  of  wood,  taken  from  the  Ab- 
bey of  St.  Edmund's  Bury,  displayed  the  portraits  of  Cardinal 
Beaufort,  of  Humphrey,  Duke  of  Gloucester,  and  of  Archbish- 
op Kemp.  So  much  for  the  English  church. 

Next  was  seen  a  magnificent  shrine  in  mosaic,  from  the 
church  of  St.  Mary  Maggiore,  in  Rome.  This  was  the  work  of 
the  noted  Peter  Cavalini,  who  constructed  the  tomb  of  Ed- 
ward the  Confessor  in  Westminster  Abbey.  The  shrine  had 
figured  over  the  sepulchre  of  four  martyrs,  who  rested  be- 
neath it  in  1257  ;  then  the  principal  window  in  the  chapel  was 
brought  from  Bexhill  in  Surrey;  and  displayed  portraits  of 
Henry  III.  and  his  queen. 

It  was  not  every  day  that  gay  visitors  traveled  down  the 
dusty  roads  from  London  to  visit  the  recluse  at  Strawberry ; 
but  Horace  wanted  them  not,  for  he  had  neighbors.  In  his 
youth  he  had  owned  for  his  playfellow  the  ever  witty,  the 
precocious,  the  all-fascinating  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu. 
"  She  was,"  he  wrote,  "  a  playfellow  of  mine  when  we  were 
children.  She  was  always  a  dirty  little  thing.  This  habit 


THE   SOCIETY    ABOUND   STKAWBEEEY    HILL.  283 

continued  with  her.  When  at  Florence,  the  Orand  Duke 
gave  her  apartments  in  his  palace.  One  room  sufficed  for 
every  thing;  and  when  she  went  away,  the  stench  was  so 
strong  that  they  were  obliged  to  fumigate  the  chamber  with 
vinegar  for  a  week." 

Let  not  the  scandal  be  implicitly  credited.  Lady  Mary, 
dirty  or  clean,  resided  occasionally,  however,  at  Twickenham. 
When  the  admirable  Lysons  composed  his  "  Environs  of  Lon- 
don," Horace  Walpole  was  still  living — it  was  in  1795 — to 
point  out  to  him  the  house  in  which  his  brilliant  acquaintance 
lived.  It  was  then  inhabited  by  Dr.  Morton.  The  profligate 
and  clever  Duke  of  Wharton  lived  also  at  Twickenham. 

Marble  Hill  was  built  by  George  II.,  for  the  Countess  of 
Suffolk,  and  Henry,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  was  the  architect.  Of 
later  years,  the  beautiful  and  injured  Mrs.  Fitzherbert  might  be 
seen  traversing  the  greensward,  which  was  laved  by  the  then 
pellucid  waters  of  the  Thames.  The  parish  of  Twickenham, 
in  fact,  was  noted  for  the  numerous  characters  who  have,  at 
various  times,  lived  in  it ;  Robert  Boyle,  the  great  philoso- 
pher ;  James  Craggs,  Secretary  of  State ;  Lord  George  Ger- 
maine ;  Lord  Bute — are  strangely  mixed  up  with  the  old  mem- 
ories which  circle  around  Twickenham. 

One  dark  figure  in  the  background  of  society  haunts  us 
also :  Lady  Macclesfield,  the  cruel  mother  of  Savage,  polluted 
Twickenham  by  her  evil  presence. 

Let  us  not  dwell  on  her  name,  but  recall,  with  somewhat 
of  pride,  that  the  names  of  that  knot  of  accomplished,  intel- 
lectual women,  who  composed  the  neighborhood  of  Straw- 
berry, were  all  English ;  those  who  loved  to  revel  in  all  its 
charms  of  society  and  intellect  were  our  justly-prized  country- 
women. 

Foremost  in  the  bright  constellation  was  Anne  Seymour 
Con  way,  too  soon  married  to  the  Hon.  John  Darner.  She 
was  one  of  the  loveliest,  the  most  enterprising,  and  the  most 
gifted  women  of  her  time — thirty-one  years  younger  than 
Horace,  having  been  born  in  1748.  He  doubtless  liked  her 
the  more  that  no  ridicule  could  attach  to  his  partiality,  which 
was  that  of  a  father  to  a  daughter,  in  so  far  as  regarded  his 
young  cousin.  She  belonged  to  a  family  dear  to  him,  being 
the  daughter  of  Field  Marshal  Henry  Seymour  Con  way:  then 
she  was  beautiful,  witty,  a  courageous  politician,  a  heroine, 
fearless  of  losing  caste  by  aspiring  to  be  an  artist.  She  was, 
in  truth,  of  our  own  time  rather  than  of  that.  The  works 
which  she  left  at  Strawberry  are  scattered ;  and  if  still  trace- 
able, are  probably  in  many  instances  scarcely  valued.  But  in 
that  lovely  spot,  hallowed  by  the  remembrance  of  Mrs.  Sid- 


284  ANNE   SEYMOUR   CONWAY. 

dons,  who  lived  there  in  some  humble  capacity — say  maid, 
say  companion — in  Guy's  Cliff  House,  near  Warwick — noble 
traces  of  Anne  Darner's  genius  are  extant :  busts  of  the  ma- 
jestic Sally  Siddons ;  of  Nature's  aristocrat,  John  Kemble ; 
of  his  brother  Charles — arrest  many  a  look,  call  up  many  a 
thought  of  Anne  Darner  and  her  gifts :  her  intelligence,  her 
warmth  of  heart,  her  beauty,  her  associates.  Of  her  powers 
Horace  Walpole  had  the  highest  opinion.  "  If  they  come  to 
Florence,"  he  wrote,  speaking  of  Mrs.  Darner's  going  to  Italy 
for  the  winter,  "  the  great  duke  should  beg  Mrs.  Darner  to 
give  him  something  of  her  statuary  ;  and  it  would  be  a  great- 
er curiosity  than  any  thing  in  his  Chamber  of  Painters.  She 
has  executed  several  marvels  since  you  saw  her ;  and  has  late- 
ly carved  two  colossal  heads  for  the  bridge  at  Henley,  which 
is  the  most  beautiful  in  the  world,  next  to  the  Ponte  di  Tri- 
nila,  and  was  principally  designed  by  her  father,  General  Con- 
way." 

No  wonder  that  he  left  to  this  accomplished  relative  the 
privilege  of  living,  after  his  death,  at  Strawberry  Hill,  of 
which  she  took  possession  in  1797,  and  where  she  remained 
twenty  years ;  giving  it  up,  in  1828,  to  Lord  Waldegrave. 

She  was,  as  we  have  said,  before  her  time  in  her  apprecia- 
tion of  what  was  noble  and  superior,  in  preference  to  that 
which  gives  to  caste  alone  its  supremacy.  During  her  last 
years  she  bravely  espoused  an  unfashionable  cause ;  and  dis- 
regarding the  contempt  of  the  lofty,  became  the  champion  of 
the  injured  and  unhappy  Caroline  of  Brunswick. 

From  his  retreat  at  Strawberry,  Horace  Walpole  heard  all 
that  befell  the  object  of  his  flame,  Lady  Sophia  Fermor.  His 
letters  present  from  time  to  time  such  passages  as  these ;  Lady 
Pomfret,  whom  he  detested,  being  always  the  object  of  his  sat- 
ire: 

"  There  is  not  the  least  news ;  but  that  my  Lord  Carteret's 
wedding  has  been  deferred  on  Lady  Sophia's  (Fermor's)  fall- 
ing dangerously  ill  of  a  scarlet  fever ;  but  they  say  it  is  to  be 
next  Saturday.  She  is  to  have  £1600  a  year  jointure,  £400 
pin-money,  and  £2000  of  jewels.  Carteret  says  he  does  not 
intend  to  marry  the  mother  (Lady  Pomfret)  and  the  whole 
family.  /What  do  you  think  my  Lady  intends  ?" 

Lord  Carteret,  who  was  the  object  of  Lady  Pomfret's  suc- 
cessful generalship,  was  at  this  period,  1744,  fifty-four  years  of 
age,  having  been  born  in  1690.  He  was  the  son  of  George, 
Lord  Carteret,  by  Grace,  daughter  of  the  first  Earl  of  Bath, 
of  the  line  of  Granville — a  title  which  became  eventually  his. 
The  fair  Sophia,  in  marrying  him,  espoused  a  man  of  no  ordi- 
nary attributes.  In  person,  Horace  Walpole,  after  the  grave 


A  MAN  WHO  NEVER  DOUBTED.  285 

had  closed  over  one  whom  he  probably  envied,  thus  describes 

him: 

"Commanding  beauty,  smoothed  by  cheerful  grace, 
Sat  on  each  open  feature  of  his  face. 
Bold  was  his  language,  rapid,  glowing,  strong, 
And  science  flowed  spontaneous  from  his  tongue : 
A  genius  seizing  systems,  slighting  rules, 
And  void  of  gall,  with  boundless  scorn  of  fools." 

After  having  been  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  Carteret  at- 
tended his  royal  master  in  the  campaign,  during  which  the 
battle  of  Dettingen  was  fought.  He  now  held  the  reins  of 
government  in  his  own  hands  as  premier.  Lord  Chesterfield 
has  described  him  as  possessing  quick  precision,  nice  decision, 
and  unbounded  presumption.  The  Duke  of  Newcastle  used 
to  say  of  him  that  he  was  a  "  man  who  never  doubted." 

In  a  subsequent  letter  we  find  the  sacrifice  of  the  young  and 
lovely  Sophia  completed.  Ambition  was  the  characteristic  of 
her  family :  and  she  went,  not  unwillingly,  to  the  altar.  The 
whole  aifair  is  too  amusingly  told  to  be  given  in  other  language 
than  that  of  Horace : 

"  I  could  tell  you  a  great  deal  of  news,"  he  writes  to  Hor- 
ace Mann,  "  but  it  would  not  be  what  you  would  expect.  It 
is  not  of  battles,  sieges,  and  declarations  of  war ;  nor  of  inva- 
sions, insurrections,  and  addresses :  it  is  the  god  of  love,  not 
he  of  war,  who  reigns  in  the  newspapers.  The  town  has.  made 
up  a  list  of  six-and-thirty  weddings,  which  I  shall  not  catalogue 
to  you.  But  the  chief  entertainment  has  been  the  nuptials  of 
our  great  Quixote  (Carteret)  and  the  fair  Sophia.  On  the  point 
of  matrimony,  she  fell  ill  of  a  scarlet  fever,  and  was  given  over, 
while  he  had  the  gout,  but  heroically  sent  her  word,  that  if  she 
was  well,  he  would  be  well.  They  corresponded  every  day,  and 
he  used  to  plague  the  cabinet  council  with  reading  her  letters 
to  them.  Last  night  they  were  married ;  and  as  all  he  does 
must  have  a  particular  air  in  it,  they  supped  at  Lord  Pomfret's. 
At  twelve,  Lady  Granville  (his  mother)  and  all  his  family  went 
to  bed,  but  the  porter:  then  my  lord  went  home,  and  waited 
for  her  in  the  lodge.  She  came  alone,  in  a  hackney-chair,  met 
him  in  the  hall,  and  was  led  up  the  back  stairs  to  bed.  What 
is  ridiculously  lucky  is,  that  Lord  Lincoln  goes  into  waiting  to- 
day, and  will  be  to  present  her !" 

The  event  was  succeeded  by  a  great  ball  at  the  Duchess  of 
Richmond's,  in  honor  of  the  bride,  Lady  Carteret  paying  her 
ladyship  the  "highest  honors,"  which  she  received  in  the 
"  highest  state."  "  I  have  seen  her,"  adds  Horace,  "  but  once, 
and  found  her  just  what  I  expected,  tres  grande  dame,  full  of 
herself,  and  yet  not  with  an  air  of  happiness.  She  looks  ill, 


286  HOEACE   IN   FAVOE. 

and  is  grown  lean,  but  is  still  the  finest  figure  in  the  world. 
The  mother  (Lady  Pomfret)  is  not  so  exalted  as  I  expected ; 
I  fancy  Carteret  has  kept  his  resolution,  and  does  not  marry 
her  too." 

While  this  game  was  being  played  out,  one  of  Walpole's 
most  valued  neighbors,  Pope,  was  dying  of  dropsy,  and  every 
evening  a  gentle  delirium  possessed  him.  Again  does  Horace 
return  to  the  theme,  ever  in  his  thoughts — the  Carterets:  again 
does  he  recount  their  triumphs  and  their  follies. 

"I  will  not  fail" — still  to  Horace  Mann — "to  make  your 
compliments  to  the  Pomfrets  and  Carterets.  I  see  them  sel- 
dom, but  I  am  in  favor ;  so  I  conclude,  for  my  Lady  Pomfret 
told  me  the  other  night  that  I  said  better  things  than  any 
body.  I  was  with  them  all  at  a  subscription-ball  at  Ranelagh 
last  week,  which  my  Lady  Carteret  thought  proper  to  look 
upon. as  given  to  her,  and  thanked  the  gentlemen,  who  were 
not  quite  so  well  pleased  at  her  condescending  to  take  it  to 
herself.  I  did  the  honors  of  all  her  dress.  '  How  charming 
your  ladyship's  cross  is!  I  am  sure  the  design  was  your  own!' 
'  No,  indeed ;  my  lord  sent  it  to  me  just  as  it  is.'  Then  as 
much  to  the  mother.  Do  you  wonder  I  say  better  things  than 
any  body  ?" 

But  these  brilliant  scenes  were  soon  mournfully  ended. 
Lady  Sophia,  the  haughty,  the  idolized,  the  Juno  of  that  gay 
circle,  was  suddenly  carried  off  by  a  fever.  With  real  feeling 
Horace  thus  tells  the  tale : 

""  Before  I  talk  of  any  public  news,  I  must  tell  you  what  you 
will  be  very  sorry  for.  Lady  Granville  (Lady  Sophia  Fermor) 
is  dead.  She  had  a  fever  for  six  wrecks  before  her  lying-in, 
and  could  never  get  it  off.  Last  Saturday  they  called  in  an- 
other physician,  Dr.  Oliver.  On  Monday  he  pronounced  her 
out  of  danger ;  about  seven  in  the  evening,  as  Lady  Pomfret 
and  Lady  Charlotte  (Fermor)  were  sitting  by  her,. the  first 
notice  they  had  of  her  immediate  danger  was  her  sighing  and 
saying,  'I  feel  death  come  very  fast  upon  me!'  She  repeated 
the  same  words  frequently,  remained  perfectly  in  her  senses 
and  calm,  and  died  about  eleven  at  night.  It  is  very  shock- 
ing for  any  body  so  young,  so  handsome,  so  arrived  at  the 
height  of  happiness,  to  be  so  quickly  snatched  away." 

So  vanished  one  of  the  brightest  stars  of  the  court.  The 
same  autumn  (1745)  was  the  epoch  of  a  great  event;  the 
marching  of  Charles  Edward  into  England.  While  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland  was  preparing  to  head  the  troops  to  oppose 
him,  the  Prince  of  Wales  was  inviting  a  party  to  supper,  the 
main  feature  of  which  was  the  citadel  of  Carlisle  in  sugar,  the 
company  all  besieging  it  with  sugar-plums.  It  would,  indeed, 


ANECDOTE    OF    SIR    WILLIAM    STANHOPE.  287 

as  Walpole  declared,  be  impossible  to  relate  all  the  Caligu- 
lisms  of  this  effeminate,  absurd  prince.  But  buffoonery  and 
eccentricity  were  the  order  of  the  day.  "  A  ridiculous  thing 
happened,"  Horace  writes,  "  when  the  princess  saw  company 
after  her  confinement.  The  new-born  babe  was  shown  in  a 
mighty  pretty  cradle,  designed  by  Kent,  under  a  canopy  in  the 
great  drawing-room.  Sir  William  Stanhope  went  to  look  at 
it.  Mrs.  Herbert,  the  governess,  advanced  to  unmantle  it.  He 
said, '  In  wax,  I  suppose  ?'  '  Sir  ?'  '  In  wax,  madam  ?'  '  The 
young  prince,  sir  ?'  '  Yes,  in  wax,  I  suppose  ?'  This  is  his  odd 
humor.  When  he  went  to  see  the  duke  at  his  birth,  he  said, 
'Lord,  it  sees!'" 

The  recluse  of  Strawberry  was  soon  consoled  by  hearing 
that  the  rebels  were  driven  back  from  Derby,  where  they  had 
penetrated,  and  where  the  remembrance  of  the  then  gay,  san- 
guine, brave  young  Chevalier  long  lingered  among  the  old  in- 
habitants. One  of  the  last  traces  of  his  short-lived  possession 
of  the  town  is  gone :  very  recently,  Exeter  House,  where  he 
lodged  and  where  he  received  his  adherents,  has  been  pulled 
down ;  the  ground  on  which  it  stood,  with  its  court  and  gar- 
den— somewhat  in  appearance  like  an  old  French  hotel — being 
too  valuable  for  the  relic  of  by-gone  times  to  be  spared.  The 
paneled  chambers,  the  fine  staircase,  certain  pictures — one  by 
Wright  of  Derby,  of  him— one  of  Miss  Walkinshaw — have  all 
disappeared. 

Of  the  capture,  the  trial,  the  death  of  his  adherents,  Horace 
Walpole  has  left  the  most  graphic  and  therefore  touching  ac- 
count that  has  been  given ;  while  he  calls  a  "  rebellion  on  the 
defensive"  a  "  despicable  affair."  Humane,  he  reverted  with 
horror  to  the  atrocities  of  General  Hawley,  "  the  Chief  Jus- 
tice," as  he  was  designated,  who  had  a  "  passion  for  frequent 
and  sudden  executions."  When  this  savage  commander  gain- 
ed intelligence  of  a  French  spy  coming  over,  he  displayed  him 
at  once  before  the  army  on  a  gallows,  dangling  in  his  muff 
and  boots.  When  one  of  the  surgeons  begged  for  the  body 
of  a  deserter  to  dissect,  "  Well,"  said  the  wretch,  "  but  you 
must  let  me  have  the  skeleton  to  hang  up  in  the  guard-room." 
Such  was  the  temper  of  the  times ;  vice,  childishness,  levity  at 
court,  brutality  in  the  camp,  were  the  order  of  the  day.  Hor- 
ace, even  Horace,  worldly  in  all,  indifferent  as  to  good  and 
bad,  seems  to  have  been  heart-sick.  His  brother's  matrimo- 
nial infidelity  vexed  him  also  sorely.  Lady  Orford,  "  tired," 
as  he  expresses  it,  of  "  sublunary  affairs,"  was  trying  to  come 
to  an  arrangement  with  her  husband,  from  whom  she  had  been 
long  separated ;  the  price  was  to  be,  he  fancied,  £2000  a  year. 
Meantime,  during  the  convulsive  state  of  political  affairs,  he  in- 


288  WALPOLE'S  HABITS. 

terested  himself  continually  in  the  improvement  of  Strawberry 
Hill.  There  was  a  rival  building,  Mr.  Bateman's  Monastery, 
at  Old  Windsor,  which  is  said  to  have  had  more  uniformity 
of  design  than  Strawberry  Hill.  Horace  used  indeed  to  call 
the  house  of  which  he  became  so  proud  a  paper  house ;  the 
walls  were  at  first  so  slight,  and  the  roof  so  insecure  in  heavy 
rains.  Nevertheless,  his  days  were  passed  as  peacefully  there 
as  the  premature  infirmities  which  came  upon  him  would 
permit. 

From  the  age  of  twenty-five  his  fingers  were  enlarged  and 
deformed  by  chalk-stones,  which  were  discharged  twice  a  year. 
"  I  can  chalk  up  a  score  with  more  rapidity  than  any  man  in 
England,"  was  his  melancholy  jest.  He  had  now  adopted  as  a 
necessity  a  strict  temperance :  he  sat  up  very  late,  either  writ- 
ing or  conversing,  yet  always  breakfasted  at  nine  o'clock. 
After  the  death  of  Madame  du  Deffand,  a  little  fat  dog,  scarce- 
ly able  to  move  for  age  and  size — her  legacy — used  to  proclaim 
his  approach  by  barking.  The  little  favorite  was  placed  beside 
him  on  a  sofa  ;  a  tea-kettle,  stand,  and  heater  were  brought  in, 
and  he  drank  two  or  three  cups  of  tea  out  of  the  finest  and 
most  precious  china  of  Japan — that  of  a  pure  white.  He 
breakfasted  with  an  appetite,  feeding  from  his  table  the  little 
dog  and  his  pet  squirrels. 

Dinner  at  Strawberry  Hill  was  usually  served  up  in  the 
small  parlor  in  winter,  the  large  dining-room  being  reserved 
for  large  parties.  As  age  drew  on,  he  was  supported  down 
stairs  by  his  valet ;  and  then,  says  the  compiler  of  Walpoliana, 
"he  ate  most  moderately  of  chicken,  pheasant,  or  any  light 
food.  Pastry  he  disliked,  as  difficult  of  digestion,  though  he 
would  taste  a  morsel  of  venison-pie.  Never  but  once,  that  he 
drank  two  glasses  of  white  wine,  did  the  editor  see  him  taste 
any  liquor,  except  ice-water.  A  pail  of  ice  was  placed  under 
the  table,  in  which  stood  a  decanter  of  water,  from  which  he 
supplied  himself  with  his  favorite  beverage." 

No  wine  was  drunk  after  dinner,  when  the  host  of  Straw- 
berry Hill  called  instantly  to  some  one  to  ring  the  bell  for  cof- 
fee. It  was  served  up  stairs,  and  there,  adds  the  same  writer, 
"  he  would  pass  about  five  o'clock,  and  generally  resuming  his 
place  on  the  sofa,  would  sit  till  two  in  the  morning,  in  miscel- 
laneous chit-chat,  full  of  singular  anecdotes,  strokes  of  wit,  and 
acute  observations,  occasionally  sending  for  books,  or  curiosi- 
ties, or  passing  to  the  library,  as  any  reference  happened  to 
arise  in  conversation.  After  his  coffee,  he  tasted  nothing ;  but 
the  snuff-box  of  tabac  d'etrennes,  from  Fribourg's,  was  not  for- 
gotten, and  was  replenished  from  a  canister  lodged  in  an  an- 
cient marble  urn  of  great  thickness,  which  stood  in  the  window 
seat,  and  served  to  secure  its  moisture  and  rich  flavor." 


e 


WHY   DID    HE   NOT   MAREY  ?  289 

In  spite  of  sill  his  infirmities,  Horace  Walpole  took  no  care 
of  his  health,  as  far  as  out-door  exercise  was  concerned.  His 
friends  beheld  him  with  horror  go  out  on  a  dewy  day:  he 
would  even  step  out  in  his  slippers.  In  his  own  grounds  he 
never  wore  a  hat :  he  used  to  say,  that  on  his  first  visit  to  Paris 
he  was  ashamed  of  his  effeminacy,  when  he  saw  every  meagre 
little  Frenchman  whom  he  could  have  knocked  down  in  a 
breath  walking  without  a  hat,  which  he  could  not  do  without 
a  certainty  of  taking  the  disease  which  the  Germans  say  is  en- 
demical  in  England,  and  which  they  call  to  catch  cold.  The 
first  trial,  he  used  to  tell  his  friends,  cost  him  a  fever,  but  he 
ot  over  it.  Draughts  of  air,  damp  rooms,  windows  open  at 
lis  back,  became  matters  of  indifference  to  him  after  once  get- 
ting through  the  hardening  process.  He  used  even  to  be  vex- 
ed at  the  officious  solicitude  of  friends  on  this  point,  and  with 
a  half  smile  would  say,  "  My  back  is  the  same  as  my  face,  and 
my  neck  is  like  my  nose."  He  regarded  his  favorite  iced-wa- 
ter  as  a  preservative  to  his  stomach,  which,  he  said,  would  last 
longer  than  his  bones.  He  did  not  take  into  account  that  the 
stomach  is  usually  the  seat  of  disease. 

One  naturally  inquires  why  the  amiable  recluse  never,  in  his 
best  days,  thought  of  marriage :  it  is  in  many  instances  a  dif- 
ficult question  to  be  answered.  In  men  of  that  period,  a  dis- 
solute life,  an  unhappy  connection,  too  frequently  explained 
the  problem.  In  the  case  before  us,  no  such  explanation  can 
be  offered.  Horace  Walpole  had  many  votaries,  many  friends, 
several  favorites,  but  no  known  mistress.  The  marks  of  the 
old  bachelor  fastened  early  on  him,  more  especially  after  he 
began  to  be  governed  by  his  valet  de  chambre.  The  notable 
personage  who  ruled  over  the  pliant  Horace  was  a  Swiss, 
named  Colomb.  This  domestic  tyrant  was  despotic ;  if  Hor- 
ace wanted  a  tree  to  be  felled,  Colomb  opposed  it,  and  the 
master  yielded.  Servants,  in  those  days,  were  intrinsically 
the  same  as  in  ours,  but  they  differed  in  manner.  The  old  fa- 
miliarity had  not  gone  out,  but  existed  as  it  still  does  among 
the  French.  Those  who  recollect  Dr.  Parr  will  remember 
how  stern  a  rule  his  factotum  Sam  exercised  over  him.  Sam 
put  down  what  wine  he  chose,  nay,  almost  invited  the  guests ; 
at  all  events,  he  had  his  favorites  among  them.  And  in  the 
same  way  as  Sam  ruled  at  Hatton,  Colomb  was,  de  facto,  the 
master  of  Strawberry  Hill. 

With  all,  its  defects,  the  little  "  plaything  house,"  as  Horace 
Walpole  called  it,  must  have  been  a  charming  house  to  visit 
in.  First,  there  was  the  host.  "His  engaging  manners," 
writes  the  editor  of  Walpoliana,  "  and  gentle,  endearing  affa- 
bility to  his  friends,  exceed  all  praise.  Not  the  smallest  hau- 

N 


290 

teur,  or  consciousness  of  rank  or  talent,  appeared  in  his  famil- 
iar conferences ;  and  he  was  ever  eager  to  dissipate  any  con- 
straint that  might  occur,  as  imposing  a  constraint  upon  him- 
self, and  knowing  that  any  such  chain  enfeebles  and  almost  an- 
nihilates the  mental  powers.  Endued  with  exquisite  sensibil- 
ity, his  wit  never  gave  the  smallest  wound,  even  to  the  gross- 
est ignorance  of  the  world,  or  the  most  morbid  hypochondriac 
bashfulness." 

He  had,  in  fact,  no  excuse  for  being  doleful  or  morbid. 
How  many  recourses  were  his !  what  an  even  destiny !  what 
prosperous  fortunes !  what  learned  luxury  we  revel  in !  he  was 
enabled  to  "  pick  up  all  the  roses  of  science,  and  to  leave  the 
thorns  behind."  To  how  few  of  the  gifted  have  the  means  of 
gratification  been  permitted !  to  how  many  has  hard  work 
been  allotted!  Then,  when  genius  has  been  endowed  with 
rank,  with  wealth,  how  often  it  has  been  degraded  by  excess ! 
Rochester's  passions  ran  riot  in  one  century  ;  Beckford's  gifts 
were  polluted  by  his  vices  in  another — signal  landmarks  of 
each  age.  But  Horace  Walpole  was  prudent,  decorous,  even 
respectable :  no  elevated  aspirations,  no  benevolent  views  en- 
nobled under  the  petitesse  of  his  nature.  He  had  neither  gen- 
ius nor  romance :  he  was  even  devoid  of  sentiment ;  but  he 
was  social  to  all,  neighborly  to  many,  and  attached  to  some  of 
his  fellow-creatures. 

The  "prettiest  bawble"  possible,  as  he  called  Strawberry 
Hill,  "  set  in  enameled  meadows  in  filigree  hedges,"  was  sur- 
rounded by  "dowagers  as  plenty  as  flounders;"  such  was 
Walpole's  assertion.  As  he  sat  in  his  library,  scented  by 
caraway,  heliotropes,  or  pots  of  tuberose,  or  orange-trees  in 
flower;  certain  dames  would  look  in  upon  him,  sometimes 
malgre  lui  ;  sometimes  to  his  bachelor  heart's  content. 

"Thank  God !"  he  wrote  to  his  cousin  Con  way,  "  the  Thames 
is  between  me  and  the  Duchess  of  Queensberry !"  Walpole's 
dislike  to  his  fair  neighbor  may  have  originated  in  the  circum- 
stance of  her  birth,  and  her  grace's  presuming  to  plume  her- 
self on  what  he  deemed  an  unimportant  distinction.  Catherine 
Hyde,  Duchess  of  Queensberry,  was  the  great-granddaughter 
of  the  famous  Lord  Clarendon,  and  the  great-niece  of  Anne, 
Duchess  of  York.  Prior  had  in  her  youth  celebrated  her  in  the 
"  Female  Phaeton,"  as  "  Kitty ;"  in  his  verse  he  begs  Phaeton 
to  give  Kitty  the  chariot,  if  but  for  a  day. 

In  reference  to  this,  Horace  Walpole,  in  the  days  of  his  ad- 
miration of  her  grace,  had  made  the  following  impromptu : 

"  On  seeing  the  Duchess  of  Queensberry  walk  at  the  funeral 
of  the  Princess  Dowager  of  Wales— 


CATHERINE   HYDE,  DUCHESS    OF    QUEENSBERKY.  291 

"To  many  a  Kitty,  Love  his  car 

Would  for  a  day  engage ; 
But  Prior's  Kitty,  ever  fair, 
Obtained  it  for  an  age." 

It  was  Kitty  who  took  Gay  under  her  patronage,  who  re- 
sented the  prohibition  of  the  "  Beggar's  Opera,"  remonstrated 
with  the  king  and  queen,  and  was  thereupon  forbidden  the 
court.  She  took  the  poet  to  her  house.  She  may  have  been 
ridiculous,  but  she  had  a  warm,  generous  heart.  "  I  am  now," 
Gay  wrote  to  Swift  in  1729,  "in  the  Duke  of  Queensberry's 
house,  and  have  been  so  ever  since  I  left  Hampstead  ;  where 
I  was  carried  at  a  time  that  it  was  thought  I  could  not  live  a 
day.  I  must  acquaint  you  (because  I  know  it  will  please  you) 
that  during  my  sickness  I  had  many  of  the  kindest  proofs  of 
friendship,  particularly  from  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Queens- 
berry  ;  who,  if  I  had  been  their  nearest  relation  and  dearest 
friend,  could  not  have  treated  me  with  more  constant  attend- 
ance then,  and  they  continue  the  same  to  me  now." 

The  duchess  appears  to  have  been  one  of  those  willful,  ec- 
centric, spoiled  children,  whom  the  world  at  once  worships 
and  ridicules :  next  to  the  Countess  of  Pomfret,  she  was  Hor- 
ace Walpole's  pet> aversion.  She  was  well  described  as  being 
"  very  clever,  very  whimsical,  and  just  not  mad."  Some  of 
Walpoles  touches  are  strongly  confirmatory  of  this  description. 
For  instance,  her  grace  gives  a  ball,  orders  every  one  to  come 
at  six,  to  sup  at  twelve,  and  go  away  directly  after :  opens  the 
ball  herself  with  a  minuet.  To  this  ball  she  sends  strange  in- 
vitations ;  "  yet,"  says  Horace,  "  except  these  flights,  the  only 
extraordinary  thing  the  duchess  did  was  to  do  nothing  extra- 
ordinary, for  I  do  not  call  it  very  mad  that  some  pique  hap- 
pening between  her  and  the  Duchess  of  ^Bedford,  the  latter 
had  this  distich  sent  to  her : 

"  '  Come  with  a  whistle — come  with  a  call ; 
Come  with  good-will,  or  come  not  at  all.' 

I  do  not  know  whether  what  I  am  going  to  tell  you  did  not 
border  a  little  upon  Moorfields.  The  gallery  where  they 
danced  was  very  cold.  Lord  Lorn,  George  Selwyn,  and  I, 
retired  into  a  little  room,  and  sat  comfortably  by  the  fire.  The 
duchess  looked  in,  said  nothing,  and  sent  a  smith  to  take  the 
hinges  of  the  door  off.  We  understood  the  hint. — left  the 
room — and  so  did  the  smith  the  door." 

"  I  must  tell  you,"  he  adds  in  another  letter,  "  of  an  admira- 
ble reply  of  your  acquaintance,  the  Duchess  of  Queensberry: 
old  Lady  Granville,  Lord  Carteret's  mother,  whom  they  call 
the  queen-mother,  from  taking  upon  her  to  do  the  honors  of  her 
son's  power,  was  pressing  the  duchess  to  ask  her  for  some 


292  KITTY   CLIVE. 

place  for  herself  or  friends,  and  assured  her  that  she  would 
procure  it,  be  it  what  it  would.  Could  she  have  picked  out  a 
litter  person  to  be  gracious  to  ?  The  duchess  made  her  a  most 
grave  courtesy,  and  said, '  Indeed,  there  was  one  thing  she  had 
set  her  heart  on.'  '  Dear  child,  how  you  oblige  me  by  asking 
any  thing !  What  is  it  ?  tell  me.'  '  Only  that  you  would  speak 
to  my  Lord  Carteret  to  get  me  made  lady  of  the  bed-chamber 
to  the  Queen  of  Hungary.'  " 

The  duchess  was,  therefore,  one  of  the  dowagers,  "  thick  as 
flounders,"  whose  proximity  was  irritating  to  the  fastidious 
bachelor.  There  was,  however,  another  Kitty  between  whom 
and  Horace  a  tender  friendship  subsisted :  this  was  Kitty 
Clive,  the  famous  actress;  formerly  Kitty  Ruftar.  Horace 
had  given  her  a  house  on  his  estate,  which  he  called  some- 
times "Little  Strawberry  Hill,"  and  sometimes  "Cliveden;" 
and  here  Mrs.  Clive  lived  with  her  brother,  Mr.  Ruftar,  until 
1785.  She  formed,  for  her  friend,  a  sort  of  outer-home,  in 
which  he  passed  his  evenings.  Long  had  he  admired  her  tal- 
ents. Those  were  the  days  of  the  drama  in  all  its  glory ;  the 
opera  was  unfashionable.  There  were,  Horace  writes  in  1742, 
on  the  26th  of  May,  only  two-and-forty  people  in  the  Opera 
House,  in  the  pit  and  boxes :  people  were  running  to  see 
"Miss  Lucy  in  Town,"  at  Drury  Lane,  and  to  admire  Mrs. 
Clive,  in  her  imitation  of  the  Muscovites ;  but  the  greatest 
crowds  assembled  to  wonder  at  Garrick,  in  "  Wine  Merchant 
turned  Player;"  and  great  and  small  alike  rushed  to  Good- 
man's Fields  to  see  him  act  all  parts,  and  to  laugh  at  his  ad- 
mirable mimicry.  It  was,  perhaps,  somewhat  in  jealousy  of 
the  counter  attractions,  that  Horace  declared  he  saw  nothing 
wonderful  in  the  acting  of  Garrick,  tnough  it  was  then  heresy 
to  say  so.  "  Now  I  talk  of  players,"  he  adds  in  the  same  let- 
ter ;  "  tell  Mr.  Chute  that  his  friend  Bracegirdle  breakfasted 
with  me  this  morning."  Horace  delighted  in  such  intimacies, 
and  in  recalling  old  times. 

Mrs.  Abingdon,  another  charming  and  clever  actress,  was 
also  a  denizen  of  Twickenham,  which  became  the  most  fash- 
ionable village  near  the  metropolis.  Mrs.  Pritchard,  likewise, 
was  attracted  there ;  but  the  proximity  of  the  Countess  of 
Suffolk,  who  lived  at  Marble  Hill,  was  the  delight  of  a  great 
portion  of  Horace  Walpole's  life.  Her  reminiscences,  her  an- 
ecdotes, her  experience,  were  valuable  as  well  as  entertaining 
to  one  who  was  forever  gathering  up  materials  for  history,  or 
for  biography,  or  for  letters  to  absent  friends. 

In  his  own  family  he  found  little  to  cheer  him :  but  if  he 
hated  one  or  two  more  especially — and  no  one  could  hate 
more  intensely  than  Horace  Walpole — it  was  his  uncle,  Lord 


DEATH  OP  HORATIO  WALPOLE.  293 

Walpole,  and  his  cousin,  that  nobleman's  son,  whom  he  christ- 
ened Pigwiggin  ;  "  my  monstrous  uncle ;"  "  that  old  buffoon, 
my  uncle,"  are  terms  which  occur  in  his  letters,  and  he  speaks 
of  the  bloody  civil  wars  between  "Horatio  Walpole"  and 
"  Horace  Walpole." 

Horatio  Walpole,  the  brother  of  Sir  Robert,  was  created  in 
June,  1756,  Baron  Walpole  of  Wolterton,  as  a  recompense  for 
fifty  years  passed  in  the  public  service — an  honor  which  he 
only  survived  nine  months.  He  expired  in  February,  1757. 
His  death  removed  one  subject  of  bitter  dislike  from  the  mind 
of  Horace ;  but  enough  remained  in  the  family  to  excite  grief 
and  resentment. 

Toward  his  own  two  brothers,  Robert,  Earl  of  Orford,  and 
Edward  Walpole,  Horace  the  younger,  as  he  was  styled  in 
contradistinction  to  his  uncle,  bore  very  little  affection.  His 
feelings,  however,  for  his  nephew  George,  who  succeeded  his 
father  as  Earl  of  Orford  in  1751,  were  more  creditable  to  his 
heart;  yet  he  gives  a  description  of  this  ill-fated  young  man 
in  his  letters,  which  shows  at  once  pride  and  disapprobation. 
One  lingers  with  regret  over  the  character  and  the  destiny  of 
this  fine  young  nobleman,  whose  existence  was  rendered  mis- 
erable by  frequent  attacks,  at  intervals,  of  insanity. 

Never  was  there  a  handsomer,  a  more  popular,  a  more  en- 
gaging being  than  George,  third  Earl  of  Orford.  When  he 
appeared  at  the  head  of  the  Norfolk  regiment  of  militia,  of 
which  he  was  colonel,  even  the  great  Lord  Chatham  broke  out 
into  enthusiasm :  "  Nothing,"  he  wrote,  "  could  make  a  bet- 
ter appearance  than  the  two  Norfolk  battalions ;  Lord  Orford, 
with  the  front  of  Mars  himself,  and  really  the  greatest  figure 
under  arms  I  ever  saw,  was  the  theme  of  every  tongue." 

His  person  and  air,  Horace  Walpole  declared,  had  a  noble 
wildness  in  them :  crowds  followed  the  battalions  when  the 
king  reviewed  them  in  Hyde  Park ;  and  among  the  gay  young 
officers  in  their  scarlet  uniforms,  faced  with  black,  in  their 
buff  waistcoats  and  gold  buttons,  none  was  so  conspicuous 
for  martial  bearing  as  Lord  Orford,  although  classed  by  his 
uncle  "  among  the  knights  of  shires  who  had  never  in  their 
lives  shot  any  thing  but  woodcocks." 

But  there  was  a  peculiarity  of  character  in  the  young  peer 
which  shocked  Horace.  "  No  man,"  he  says  in  one  of  his 
letters,  "  ever  felt  such  a  disposition  to  love  another  as  I  did 
to  love  him.  I  flattered  myself  that  he  would  restore  some 
lustre  to  our  house — at  least  not  let  it  totally  sink ;  but  I  am 

forced  to  give  him  up,  and  all  my  Walpole  views 

He  has  a  good  breeding,  and  attention  when  he  is  with  you 
that  is  even  flattering He  promises,  offers  every 


294  A   VISIT   TO    HOUGHTON. 

thing  one  can  wish;  but  this  is  all:  the  instant  he  leaves 
you,  all  the  world  are  nothing  to  him;  he  would  not  give 
himself  the  least  trouble  in  the  world  to  give  any  one  satis- 
faction ;  yet  this  is  mere  indolence  of  mind,  not  of  body :  his 
whole  pleasure  is  outrageous  exercise." 

"  He  is,"  in  another  place  Horace  adds,  "  the  most  selfish 
man  in  the  world :  without  being  in  the  least  interested,  he 
loves  nobody  but  himself,  yet  neglects  every  view  of  fortune 
and  ambition.  Yet,"  he  concludes,  "it  is  impossible  not  to 
love  him  when  one  sees  him :  impossible  to  esteem  him  when 
one  thinks  on  him." 

The  young  lord,  succeeding  to  an  estate  deeply  encumbered, 
both  by  his  father  and  grandfather,  rushed  on  the  turf,  and 
involved  himself  still  more.  In  vain  did  Horace  the  younger 
endeavor  to  secure  for  him  the  hand  of  Miss  Nicholls,  an  heir- 
ess with  £50,000,  and,  to  that  end,  placed  the  young  lady  with 
Horace  the  elder  (Lord  Walpole),  at  Wolterton.  The  scheme 
failed :  the  crafty  old  politician  thought  he  might  as  well  ben- 
efit his  own  sons  as  his  nephew,  for  he  had  himself  claims  on 
the  Houghton  estate  which  he  expected  Miss  Mcholls's  fortune 
might  help  to  liquidate. 

At  length  the  insanity  and  recklessness  displayed  by  his 
nephew — the  handsome,  martial  George — induced  poor  Hor- 
ace to  take  afiairs  in  his  own  hands.  His  reflections,  on  his 
paying  a  visit  to  Houghton,  to  look  after  the  property  there, 
are  pathetically  expressed : 

"Here  I  am  again  at  Houghton,"  he  writes  in  March,  1761, 
"  and  alone ;  in  this  spot  where  (except  two  hours  last  month) 
I  have  not  been  in  sixteen  years.  Think  what  a  crowd  of 
reflections!  .  .  .  Here  I  am  probably  for  the  last  time 
of  my  life :  every  clock  that  strikes,  tells  me  I  am  an  hour 
nearer  to  yonder  church — that  church  into  which  I  have  not 
yet  had  courage  to  enter ;  where  lies  that  mother  on  whom  I 
doted,  and  who  doted  on  me !  There  are  the  two  rival  mis- 
tresses of  Houghton,  neither  of  whom  ever  wished  to  enjoy  it. 
There,  too,  is  he  who  founded  its  greatness — to  contribute  to 
whose  fall  Europe  was  embroiled ;  there  he  sleeps  in  quiet  and 
dignity,  while  his  friend  and  his  foe — rather  his  false  ally  and 
real  enemy — Newcastle  and  Bath,  are  exhausting  the  dregs  of 
their  pitiful  lives  in  squabbles  and  pamphlets." 

When  he  looked  at  the  pictures — that  famous  Houghton  col- 
lection— the  surprise  of  Horace  was  excessive.  Accustomed 
to  see  nothing  elsewhere  but  daubs,  he  gazed  with  ecstasy  on 
them.  "  The'majesty  of  Italian  ideas,"  he  says,  V  almost  sinks 
before  the  warm  nature  of  Italian  coloring !  Alas !  don't  I  grow 
old?" 


FAMILY   MISFORTUNES.  295 

As  he  lingered  in  the  Gallery,  with  mingled  pride  and  sad- 
ness, a  party  arrived  to  see  the  house — a  man  and  three  women, 
in  riding-dresses — who  "rode  post"  through  the  apartments. 
"  I  could  not,"  he  adds,  "  hurry  before  them  fast  enough ;  they 
Avere  not  so  long  in  seeing  the  whole  gallery  as  I  could  have 
been  in  one  room,  to  examine  what  I  knew  by  heart.  I  re- 
member formerly  being  often  diverted  with  this  kind  of  seers  ; 
they  come,  ask  what  such  a  room  is  called  in  which  Sir  Robert 
lay,  write  it  down,  admire  a  lobster  or  a  cabbage  in  a  Market 
Piece,  dispute  whether  the  last  room  was  green  or  purple,  and 
then  hurry  to  the  inn,  for  fear  the  fish  should  be  overdressed. 
How  different  my  sensations !  not  a  picture  here  but  recalls  a 
history ;  not  one  but  I  remember  in  Downing  Street,  or  Chel- 
sea, where  queens  and  crowds  admired  them,  though  seeing 
them  as  little  as  these  travelers  !"* 

After  tea  he  strolled  into  the  garden.  They  told  him  it 
was  now  called  a  pleasure-ground.  To  Horace  it  was  a  scene 
of  desolation — a  floral  Nineveh.  "  What  a  dissonant  idea  of 
pleasure !  those  groves,  those  cdlees,  where  I  have  passed  so 
many  charming  moments,  were  now  stripped  up  or  overgrown 
— many  fond  paths  I  could  not  unravel,  though  with  an  exact 
clew  in  my  memory.  I  met  two  gamekeepers,  and  a  thousand 
hares !  In  the  days  when  all  my  soul  was  tuned  to  pleasure 
and  vivacity  (and  you  will  think  perhaps  it  is  far  from  being 
out  of  tune  yet),  I  hated  Houghton  and  its  solitude;  yet  I 
loved  this  garden,  as  now,  with  many  regrets,  I  love  Hough- 
ton — Houghton,  I  know  not  what  to  call  it — a  monument  of 
grandeur  or  ruin !" 

Although  he  did  not  go  with  the  expectation  of  finding  a 
land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  the  sight  of  all  this  ruin 
long  saddened  his  thoughts.  All  was  confusion,  disorder, 
debts,  mortgages,  sales,  pillage,  villainy,  waste,  folly,  and  mad- 
ness. The  nettles  and  brambles  in  the  park  were  up  to  his 
shoulders ;  horses  had  been  turned  into  the  garden,  and  ban- 
ditti lodged  in  every  cottage. 

The  perpetuity  of  livings  that  came  up  to  the  very  park 
palings  had  been  sold,  and  the  farms  let  at  half  their  value. 
Certainly,  if  Houghton  were  bought  by  Sir  Robert  Walpole 
with  public  money,  that  public  was  now  avenged. 

The  owner  of  this  ruined  property  had  just  stemmed  the 
torrent ;  but  the  worst  was  to  come.  The  pictures  were  sold, 
and  to  Russia  they  went. 

While  thus  harassed  by  family  misfortunes,  other  annoy- 

*  Sir  Robert  Walpole  purchased  a  house  and  garden  at  Chelsea  in  1722, 
near  the  college  adjoining  Gough  House. — Cunningham's  "London." 


296  POOR  CHATTERTON! 

ances  came.  The  mournful  story  of.  Chatterton's  fate  was 
painfully  mixed  up  with  the  tenor  of  Horace  Walpole's  life. 

The  gifted  and  unfortunate  Thomas  Chatterton  was  born  at 
Bristol  in  1752.  Even  from  his  birth  fate  seemed  to  pursue 
him,  for  he  was  a  posthumous  son  :  and  if  the  loss  of  a  father 
in  the  highest  ranks  of  life  be  severely  felt,  how  much  more 
so  is  it  to  be  deplored  in  those  which  are  termed  the  working 
classes ! 

The  friendless  enthusiast  was  slow  in  learning  to  read ;  but 
when  the  illuminated  capitals  of  an  old  book  were  presented 
to  him,  he  quickly  learned  his  letters.  This  fact,  and  his  being 
taught  to  read  out  of  a  black-letter  Bible,  are  said  to  have  ac- 
counted for  his  facility  in  the  imitation  of  antiquities. 

Pensive  and  taciturn,  he  picked  up  education  at  a  charity- 
school,  until  apprenticed  to  a  scrivener,  when  he  began  that 
battle  of  life  which  ended  to  him  so  fatally. 

Upon  very  slight  accidents  did  his  destiny  hinge.  In  those 
days  women  worked  with  thread,  and  used  thread -papers. 
Now  paper  was  dear :  dainty  matrons  liked  tasty  thread-pa- 
pers. A  pretty  set  of  thread-papers,  with  birds  or  flowers 
painted  on  each,  was  no  mean  present  for  a  friend.  Chatter- 
ton,  a  quiet  child,  one  day  noticed  that  his  mother's  thread- 
papers  were  of  no  ordinary  materials.  They  were  made  of 
parchment,  and  on  this  parchment  were  some  of  the  black-letter 
characters  by  which  his  childish  attention  had  been  fixed  to 
his  book.  The  fact  was,  that  his  uncle  was  sexton  to  the  an- 
cient church  of  St.  Mary  Redcliffe,  at  Bristol ;  and  the  parch- 
ment was  the  fruit  of  theft.  Chatterton's  father  had  carried 
off,  from  a  room  in  the  church,  certain  ancient  manuscripts, 
which  had  been  left  about ;  being  originally  extracted  from 
what  was  called  Mr.  Canynge's  coffin.  Now,  Mr.  Canynge,  an 
eminent  merchant,  had  rebuilt  St.  Mary  Redcliffe  in  the  reign 
of  Edward  IV. :  and  the  parchments,  therefore,  were  of  some 
antiquity.  The  antiquary  groans  over  their  loss  in  vain  :  Chat- 
terton's father  had  covered  his  books  with  them  ;  his  mother 
had  used  up  the  strips  for  thread-papers ;  and  Thomas  Chat- 
terton himself  contrived  to  abstract  a  considerable  portion  also, 
for  his  own  purposes. 

He  was  ingenious,  industrious,  a  poet  by  nature,  and,  won- 
derful to  say,  withal  a  herald  by  taste.  Upon  his  nefarious 
possessions,  he  founded  a  scheme  of  literary  forgeries ;  pur- 
porting to  be  ancient  pieces  of  poetry  found  in  Canynge's 
chest;  and  described  as  being  the  production  of  Thomas  Can- 
ynge and  of  his  friend,  one  Thomas  Rowley,  a  priest.  Money 
and  books  were  sent  to  Chatterton  in  return  for  little  strips  of 
vellum,  which  he  passed  off  as  the  original  itself;  and  the  sue- 


WALPOLE'S  CONCERN  WITH  CHATTERTON.  297 

cessful  forger  might  now  be  seen  in  deep  thought,  walking  in 
the  meadows  near  Redcliffe ;  a  marked,  admired  poetic  youth. 

In  I769j  Chatterton  wrote  to  Horace  Walpole,  offering  to 
send  him  some  accounts  of  eminent  painters  who  had  flourish- 
ed at  Bristol,  and  at  the  same  time  mentioning  the  discovery 
of  the  poems,  and  inclosing  some  specimens.  In  a  subsequent 
letter  he  begged  Walpole  to  aid  him  in  his  wish  to  be  freed 
from  his  then  servile  condition,  and  to  be  placed  in  one  more 
congenial  to  his  pursuits. 

In  his  choice  of  a  patron  poor  Chatterton  made  a  fatal  mis- 
take. The  benevolence  of  Horace  was  of  a  general  kind,  and 
never  descended  to  any  thing  obscure  or  unappreciated.  There 
was  a  certain  hardness  in  that  nature  of  his  which  had  so  pleas- 
ant an  aspect.  "  An  artist,"  he  once  said,  "  has  his  pencils — 
an  author  his  pens — and  the  public  must  reward  them  as  it 
pleases."  Alas !  he  forgot  how  long  it  is  before  penury,  even 
ennobled  by  genius,  can  make  itself  seen,  heard,  approved,  re- 
paid: how  vast  is  the  influence  of prestige!  how  generous  the 
hand  which  is  extended  to  those  in  want,  even  if  in  error ! 
All  that  Horace  did,  however,  was  strictly  correct :  he  showed 
the  poems  to  Gray  and  Mason,  who  pronounced  them  forge- 
ries ;  and  he  wrote  a  cold  and  reproving  letter  to  the  starving 
author :  and  no  one  could  blame  him :  Chatterton  demanded 
back  his  poems ;  Walpole  was  going  to  Paris,  and  forgot  to 
return  them.  Another  letter  came :  the  wounded  poet  again 
demanded  them,  adding,  that  Walpole  would  not  have  dared 
to  use  him  so  had  he  not  been  poor.  The  poems  were  return- 
ed in  a  blank  cover:  and  here  all  Walpole's  concern  with 
Thomas  Chatterton  ends.  All  this  happened  in  1769.  In 
August,  1770,  the  remains  of  the  unhappy  youth  were  carried 
to  the  burial-ground  of  Shoe  Lane  workhouse,  near  Holborn. 
He  had  swallowed  arsenic ;  had  lingered  a  day  in  agonies ;  and 
then,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  expired.  Starvation  had  prompt- 
ed the  act :  yet  on  the  day  before  he  had  committed  it,  he  had 
refused  a  dinner,  of  which  he  was  invited  by  his  hostess  to 
partake,  assuring  her  that  he  was  not  hungry.  Just  or  unjust, 
the  world  has  never  forgiven  Horace  Walpole  for  Chatterton's 
misery.  His  indifference  has  been  contrasted  with  the  gener- 
osity of  Edmund  Burke  to  Crabbe:  a  generosity  to  which  we 
owe  "The  Village,"  "The  Borough,"  and  to  which  Crabbe 
owed  his  peaceful  old  age,  and  almost  his  existence.  The 
cases  were  different ;  but  Crabbe  had  his  faults — and  Chatter- 
ton  was  worth  saving.  It  is  well  for  genius  that  there  are 
souls  in  the  world  more  sympathizing,  less  worldly,  and  more 
indulgent,  than  those  of  such  men  as  Horace  Walpole.  Even 
the  editor  of  "  Walpoliana"  lets  judgment  go  by  default.  "As 

N  2 


298  ANECDOTE  OF  MADAME  GEOFFKIN. 

to  artists,"  he  says,  "  he  paid  them  what  they  earned,  and  he 
commonly  employed  mean  ones,  that  the  reward  might  be 
smaller." 

Let  us  change  the  strain :  stilled  be  the  mournful  note  on 
which  we  have  rested  too  long.  What  have  wits  and  beaux 
and  men  of  society  to  do  with  poets  and  beggars  ?  Behold, 
Horace,  when  he  has  written  his  monitory  letter,  packs  up  for 
Paris.  Let  us  follow  him  there,  and  see  him  in  the  very  cen- 
tre of  his  pleasures — in  the  salon  of  La  Marquise  du  Deffand. 

Horace  Walpole  had  perfected  his  education,  as  a  fine  gen- 
tleman, by  his  intimacy  with  Madame  Geoffrin,  to  whom  Lady 
Hervey  had  introduced  him.  She  called  him  le  nouveau  Riche- 
lieu; and  Horace  was  sensible  of  so  great  a  compliment  from 
a  woman  at  once  "  spirituelle  and  pieuse" — a  combination  rare 
in  France.  Nevertheless,  she  had  the  national  views  of  mat- 
rimony. "  What  have  you  done,  Madame,"  said  a  foreigner  to 
her,  "  with  the  poor  man  I  used  to  see  here,  who  never  spoke 
a  word?" 

"  Ah,  mon  Dieu  /"  was  the  reply,  "  that  was  my  husband : 
he  is  dead."  She  spoke  in  the  same  tone  as  if  she  had  been 
specifying  the  last  new  opera,  or  referring  to  the  latest  work 
in  vogue :  things  just  passed  away. 

The  Marquise  du  Deffand  was  a  very  different  personage 
to  Madame  Geoffrin,  whose  great  enemy  she  was.  When 
Horace  Walpole  first  entered  into  the  society  of  the  marquise, 
she  was  stone  blind,  and  old ;  but  retained  not  only  her  wit, 
and  her  memory,  but  her  passions.  Passions,  like  artificial 
flowers,  are  unbecoming  to  age ;  and  those  of  the  witty,  athe- 
istical marquise  are  almost  revolting.  Scandal  still  attached 
her  name  to  that  of  Henault,  of  whom  Voltaire  wrote  the  epi- 
taph beginning 

"Henault,  fameux  par  vos  soupers 
Et  votre  '  chronologic,'  "  etc. 

Henault  was  for  many  years  deaf;  and,  during  the  whole  of 
his  life,  disagreeable.  There  was  something  farcical  in  the  old 
man's  receptions  on  his  death-bed ;  while,  among  the  rest  of 
the  company,  came  Madame  du  Deffand,  a  blind  old  woman  of 
seventy,  who,  bawling  in  his  ear,  aroused  the  lethargic  man  by 
inquiring  after  a  former  rival  of  hers,  Madame  de  Castelmaron 
— about  whom  he  went  on  babbling  until  death  stopped  his 
voice. 

She  was  seventy  years  of  age  when  Horace  Walpole,  at 
fifty,  became  her  passion.  She  was  poor  and  disreputable, 
and  even  the  high  position  of  having  been  mistress  to  the 
Regent  could  not  save  her  from  being  decried  by  a  large 


THE    MISS    BEKRYS.  299 

portion  of  that  society  which  centred  round  the  bel  esprit. 
"  She  was,"  observes  the  biographer  of  Horace  Walpole  (the 
lamented  author  of  the  "  Crescent  and  the  Cross"),  "  always 
gay,  always  charming — every  thing  but  a  Christian."  The 
loss  of  her  eyesight  did  not  impair  the  remains  of  her  beauty  : 
her  replies,  her  compliments,  were  brilliant;  even  from  one 
whose  best  organs  of  expression  were  mute. 

A  frequent  guest  at  her  suppers,  Walpole's  kindness,  real 
or  pretended,  soon  made  inroads  on  a  heart  still  susceptible. 
The  ever-green  passions  of  this  venerable  sinner  threw  out 
fresh  shoots ;  and  she  became  enamored  of  the  attentive  and 
admired  Englishman.  Horace  was  susceptible  of  ridicule: 
there  his  somewhat  icy  heart  was  easily  touched.  Partly  in 
vanity,  partly  in  playfulness,  he  encouraged  the  sentimental 
exaggeration  of  his  correspondent ;  but,  becoming  afraid  of 
the  world's  laughter,  ended  by  reproving  her  warmth,  and  by 
chilling,  under  the  refrigerating  influence  of  his  cautions,  all 
the  romance  of  the  octogenarian. 

In  later  days,  however,  after  his  solicitude — partly  soothed 
by  the  return  of  his  letters  to  Madame  du  Deffand,  partly  by 
her  death — had  completely  subsided,  a  happier  friendship  was 
permitted  to  solace  his  now  increasing  infirmities,  as  well  as  to 
enhance  his  social  pleasures. 

It  was  during  the  year  1788,  when  he  was  living  in  retire- 
ment at  Strawberry,  that  his  auspicious  friendship  was  formed. 
The  only  grain  of  ambition  he  had  left,  he  declared,  was  to 
believe  himself  forgotten ;  that  was  "  the  thread  that  had  run 
through  his  life ;"  "  so  true,"  he  adds,  "  except  the  folly  of  be- 
ing an  author,  has  been  what  I  said  last  year  to  the  Prince" 
(afterward  George  IV.)  "  when  he  asked  me  '  if  I  was  a  Free- 
mason,' I  replied,  '  No,  sir ;  I  never  was  any  thing.' " 

Lady  Charleville  told  him  that  some  of  her  friends  had 
been  to  see  Strawberry.  "Lord!"  cried  one  lady,  "who  is 
that  Mr.  Walpole  ?"  "  Lord !"  cried  a  second ;  "  don't  you 
know  the  great  epicure,  Mr.  Walpole?"  "Who  ?"  cried  the 
first — " great  epicure !  you  mean  the  antiquarian."  "Surely," 
adds  Horace,  "  this  anecdote  may  take  its  place  in  the  chap- 
ter of  local  fame." 

But  he  reverts  to  his  new  acquisition  —  the  acquaintance 
of  the  Miss  Berrys,  who  had  accidentally  taken  a  house  next 
to  his  at  Strawberry  Hill.  Their  story,  he  adds,  was  a  curi- 
ous one :  their  descent  Scotch ;  their  grandfather  had  an  estate 
of  £5000  a  year,  but  disinherited  his  son  on  account  of  his 
marrying  a  woman  with  no  fortune.  She  died,  and  the  grand- 
father, wishing  for  an  heir-male,  pressed  the  widower  to  mar- 
ry again:  he  refused;  and  said  he  would  devote  himself  to  the 


300  HOKACE'S  TWO  "STKAW  BEKKIES." 

education  of  his  two  daughters.  The  second  son  generously 
gave  up  £8QO  a  year  to  his  brother,  and  the  two  motherless 
girls  were  taken  to  the  Continent,  whence  they  returned  the 
"  best-informed  and  most  perfect  creatures  that  Horace  Wai- 
pole  ever  saw  at  their  age." 

Sensible,  natural,  frank,  their  conversation  proved  most 
agreeable  to  a  man  who  was  sated  of  grand  society,  and  sick 
of  vanity  until  he  had  indulged  in  vexation  of  spirit.  He  dis- 
covered by  chance  only — for  there  was  no  pedantry  in  these 
truly  well-educated  women — that  the  eldest  understood  Latin, 
and  "  was  a  perfect  Frenchwoman  in  her  language."  Then 
the  youngest  drew  well ;  and  copied  one  of  Lady  Di  Beau- 
clerk's  pictures,  "The  Gipsies,"  though  she  had  never  at- 
tempted colors  before.  Then,  as  to  looks :  Mary,  the  eldest, 
had  a  sweet  face,  the  more  interesting  from  being  pale ;  with 
fine  dark  eyes  that  were  lighted  up  when  she  spoke.  Agnes, 
the  younger,  was  "  hardly  to  be  called  handsome,  but  almost ;" 
with  an  agreeable,  sensible  countenance.  It  is  remarkable 
that  women  thus  delineated — not  beauties,  yet  not  plain — are 
always  the  most  fascinating  to  men.  The  sisters  doted  on 
each  other :  Mary  taking  the  lead  in  society.  "  I  must  even 
tell  you,"  Horace  wrote  to  the  Countess  of  Ossory,  "  that  they 
dress  within  the  bounds  of  fashion,  but  without  the  excres- 
cences and  balconies  with  which  modern  hoydens  overwhelm 
and  barricade  their  persons."  (One  would  almost  have  sup- 
posed that  Horace  had  lived  in  the  days  of  crinoline.) 

The  first  night  that  Horace  met  the  two  sisters,  he  refused 
to  be  introduced  to  them :  having  heard  so  much  of  them 
that  he  concluded  they  would  be  "  all  pretension."  The  sec- 
ond night  that  he  met  them,  he  sat  next  Mary,  and  found  her 
an  "  angel  both  inside  and  out."  He  did  not  know  which  he 
liked  best;  but  Mary's  face,  which  was  formed  for  a  senti- 
mental novel,  or  still  more,  for  genteel  comedy,  riveted  him,  he 
owned.  Mr.  Berry,  the  father,  was  a  little  "  merry  man  with 
a  round  face,"  whom  no  one  would  have  suspected  of  sacri- 
ficing "  all  for  love,  and  the  world  well  lost."  This  delight- 
ful family  visited  him  every  Sunday  evening ;  the  region  of 
Twickenham  being  too  "  proclamatory"  for  cards  to  be  intro- 
duced on  the  seventh  day,  conversation  was  tried  instead ; 
thankful,  indeed,  was  Horace  for  the  "  pearls,"  as  he  styled 
them,  thus  thrown  in  his  path.  His  two  "  Straw  Berries,"  as 
he  christened  them,  were  henceforth  the  theme  of  every  let- 
ter. He  had  set  up  a  printing-press  many  years  previously  at 
Strawberry,  and  on  taking  the  young  ladies  to  see  it,  he  re- 
membered the  gallantry  of  his  former  days,  and  they  found 
these  stanzas  in  type : 


TAPPING    A   NEW   REIGN.  301 

"To  Mary's  lips  has  ancient  Rome 

Her  purest  language  taught; 
And  from  the  modern  city  home 
Agnes  its  pencil  brought. 

"Rome's  ancient  Horace  sweetly  chants 

Such  maids  with  lyric  fire  ; 
Albion's  old  Horace  sings  nor  paints, 
He  only  'can  admire. 

"  Still  would  his  press  their  fame  record, 

So  amiable  the  pair  is ! 
But,  ah  !  how  vain  to  think  his  word 
Can  add  a  Straw  to  Berry's." 

On  the  following  day,  Mary,  whom  he  terms  the  Latin 
Nymph,  sent  the  following  lines : 

"Had  Rome's  famed  Horace  thus  addrest 

His  Lydia  or  his  Lyce, 
He  had  ne'er  so  oft  complained  their  breast 
To  him  was  cold  and  icy. 

"But  had  they  sought  their  joy  to  explain, 

Or  praise  their  generous  bard, 
Perhaps,  like  me,  they  had  tried  in  vain, 
And  felt  the  task  too  hard." 

The  society  of  this  family  gave  him  the  truest,  and  perhaps 
the  only  relish  he  ever  had  of  domestic  life.  But  his  mind 
was  harassed  toward  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  by 
the  insanity  not  only  of  his  nephew,  but  by  the  great  national 
calamity,  that  of  the  king.  "  Every  eighty-eight  seems,"  he 
remarks,  "to  be  a  favorite  period  with  fate;"  he  was  "too 
ancient,"  he  said,  "  to  tap  what  might  almost  be  called  a  new 
reign ;"  of  which  he  was  not  likely  to  see  much.  He  never 
pretended  to  penetration,  but  his  foresight,  "if  he  gave  it  the 
rein,"  would  not  prognosticate  much  felicity  to  the  country 
from  the  madness  of  his  father,  and  the  probable  regency  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales.  His  happiest  relations  were  now  not 
with  politics  or  literature,  but  with  Mrs.  Darner  and  the  Miss 
Berrys,  to  whom  he  wrote :  "  I  am  afraid  of  protesting  how 
much  I  delight  in  your  society,  lest  I  should  seem  to  affect  be- 
ing gallant ;  but,  if  two  negatives  make  an  affirmative,  why 
may  not  two  ridicules  compose  one  piece  of  sense  ?  and,  there- 
fore, as  I  am  in  love  with  you  both,  I  trust  it  is  a  proof  of  the 
good  sense  of  your  devoted — H.  WALPOLE." 

He  was  doomed,  in  the  decline  of  life,  to  witness  two  great 
national  convulsions:  of  the  insurrection  of  1745  he  wrote 
feelingly — -justly — almost  pathetically:  forty-five  years  later, 
he  was  tired,  he  said,  of  railing  against  French  barbarity  and 
folly.  "  Legislators !  a  Senate !  to  neglect  laws,  in  order  to 
annihilate  coats-of-arms  and  liveries !"  George  Selwyn  said, 


302  THE   SIGN   OP  THE   GOTHIC   CASTLE. 

that  Monsieur  the  king's  brother  was  the  only  man  of  rank 
from  whom  they  could  not  take  a  title.  His  alarm  at  the  idea 
of  his  two  young  friends  going  to  the  Continent  was  excessive. 
The  flame  of  revolution  had  burst  forth  at  Florence :  Flanders 
was  not  a  safe  road;  dreadful  horrors  had  been  perpetrated 
at  Avignon.  Then  he  relates  a  characteristic  anecdote  of 
poor  Marie  Antoinette.  She  went  with  the  king  to  see  the 
manufacture  of  glass.  As  they  passed  the  Halle,  the  pois- 
sardes  hurraed  them.  "Upon  my  word,"  said  the  queen, 
"  these  folks  are  civiler  when  you  visit  them  than  when  they 
visit  you." 

Walpole's  affection  for  the  Miss  Berrys  cast  a  glow  of  hap- 
piness over  the  fast-ebbing  year  of  his  life.  "  In  happy  days," 
he  wrote  to  them  when  they  were  abroad,  "  I  called  you  my 
dear  wives;  now  I  can  only  think  of  you  as  darling  children, 
of  whom  I  am  bereaved."  He  was  proud  of  their  affection ; 
proud  of  their  spending  many  hours  with  "  a  very  old  man," 
while  they  were  the  objects  of  general  admiration.  These 
charming  women  survived  until  our  own  time :  the  centre  of  a 
circle  of  the  leading  characters  in  literature,  politics,  art,  rank, 
and  virtue.  They  are  remembered  with  true  regret.  The 
fullness  of  their  age  perfected  the  promise  of  their  youth. 
Samuel  Rogers  used  to  say  that  they  had  lived  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Anne,  so  far  back  seemed  their  memories  which  were 
so  coupled  to  the  past ;  but  the  youth  of  their  minds,  their 
feelings,  their  intelligence,  remained  almost  to  the  last. 

For  many  years  Horace  Walpole  continued,  in  spite  of  in- 
cessant attacks  of  the  gout,  to  keep  almost  open  house  at 
Strawberry ;  in  short,  he  said,  he  kept  an  inn — the  sign,  the 
Gothic  Castle:  "Take  my  advice,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend, 
"  never  build  a  charming  house  for  yourself  between  London 
and  Hampton  Court ;  every  body  will  live  in  it  but  you." 

The  death  of  Lady  Suffolk,  in  1767,  had  been  an  essential 
loss  to  her  partial,  and  not  too  rigid  neighbors.  Two  days  be- 
fore the  death  of  George  II.,  she  had  gone  to  Kensington,  not 
knowing  that  there  was  a  review  there.  Hemmed  in  by  coach- 
es, she  found  herself  close  to  George  II.  and  to  Lady  Yar- 
mouth. Neither  of  them  knew  her — a  circumstance  which 
greatly  affected  the  countess. 

Horace  Walpole  was  now  desirous  of  growing  old  with  dig- 
nity. He  had  no  wish  "  to  dress  up  a  withered  person,  nor  to 
drag  it  about  to  public  places;"  but  he  was  equally  averse 
from  "sitting  at  home,  wrapped  up  in  flannels,"  to  receive 
condolences  from  people  he  did  not  care  for — and  attentions 
from  relations  who  were  impatient  for  his  death.  Well  might 
a  writer  in  the  "Quarterly  Review"  remark,  that  our  most 


GROWING    OLD    WITH    DIGNITY.  303 

useful  lessons  in  reading  Walpole's  Letters  are  not  only  de- 
rived from  his  sound  sense,  but  from  "  considering  this  man  of 
the  world,  full  of  information  and  sparkling  with  vivacity, 
stretched  on  a  sick-bed,  and  apprehending  all  the  tedious  lan- 
guor of  helpless  decrepitude  and  deserted  solitude."  His  later 
years  had  been  diversified  by  correspondence  with  Hannah 
More,  who  sent  him  her  poems  of  the  JSas  Bleu,  into  which 
she  had  introduced  his  name.  In  1786  she  visited  him  at 
Strawberry  Hill.  He  was  then  a  martyr  to  the  gout,  but  with 
spirits  gay  as  ever :  "I  never  knew  a  man  suffer  pain  with  such 
entire  patience,"  was  Hannah  More's  remark.  His  correspond- 
ence with  her  continued  regularly ;  but  that  with  the  charm- 
ing sisters  was  delightfully  interrupted  by  their  residence  at 
Little  Strawberry  Hill —  Cliveden,  as  it  was  also  called,  where 
day  after  day,  night  after  night,-they  gleaned  stores  from  that 
rich  fund  of  anecdote  which  went  back  to  the  days  of  George 
I.,  touched  even  on  the  anterior  epoch  of  Anne,  and  came  in 
volumes  of  amusement  down  to  the*  very  era  when  the  old 
man  was  sitting  by  his  parlor  fire,  happy  with  his  wives  near 
him,  resigned  and  cheerful.  For  his  young  friends  he  com- 
posed his  "  Reminiscences  of  the  Court  of  England." 

He  still  wrote  cheerfully  of  his  physical  state,  in  which  eye- 
sight was  perfect;  hearing  little  impaired;  and  though  his 
hands  and  feet  were  crippled,  he  could  use  them ;  and  since 
he  neither  "  wished  to  box,  to  wrestle,  nor  to  dance  a  horn- 
pipe," he  was  contented. 

His  character  became  softer,  his  wit  less  caustic,  his  heart 
more  tender,  his  talk  more  reverent,  as  he  approached  the 
term  of  along,  prosperous  life — and  knew,  practically,  the  small 
value  of  all  that  he  had  once  too  fondly  prized. 

His  later  years  were  disturbed  by  the  marriage  of  his  niece 
Maria  Waldegrave  to  the  Duke  of  Gloucester;  but  the  se- 
verest interruption  to  his  peace  was  his  own  succession  to  an 
earldom. 

In  1791,  George, Earl  of  Orford,  expired;  leaving  an  estate 
encumbered  with  debt,  and,  added  to  the  bequest,  a  series  of 
lawsuits  threatened  to  break  down  all  remaining  comfort  in 
the  mind  of  the  uncle,  who  had  already  suffered  so  much  on 
the  young  man's  account. 

He  disdained  the  honors  which  brought  him  such  solid 
trouble,  with  such  empty  titles,  and  for  some  time  refused  to 
sign  himself  otherwise,  but  "Uncle  to  the  late  Earl  of  Orford." 
He  was  certainly  not  likely  to  be  able  to  walk  in  his  robes  to 
the  House  of  Lords,  or  to  grace  a  levee.  However,  he  thank- 
ed God  he  was  free  from  pain.  "  Since  all  my  fingers  are  use- 
less," he  wrote  to  Hannah  More,  "  and  that  I  have  only  six 


304  WALPOLE'S  LAST  HOURS. 

hairs  left,  I  am  not  very  much  grieved  at  not  being  able  to 
cornb  my  head  !"  To  Hannah  More  he  wrote,  in  all  sincerity, 
referring  to  his  elevation  to  the  peerage:  "For  the  other 
empty  metamorphosis  that  has  happened  to  the  outward  man, 
you  do  me  justice  in  believing  that  it  can  do  nothing  but  tease 
me ;  it  is  being  called  names  in  one's  old  age :"  m  fact,  he 
reckoned  on  being  styled  "  Lord  Methusalem."  He  had  lived 
to  hear  of  the  cruel  deaths  of  the  once  gay  and  high-born 
friends  whom  he  had  known  in  Paris,  by  the  guillotine :  he 
had  lived  to  execrate  the  monsters  who  drove  the  grandest 
heroine  of  modern  times,  Marie  Antoinette,  to  madness ;  he 
lived  to  censure  the  infatuation  of  religious  zeal  in  the  Bir- 
mingham riots.  "  Are  not  the  devils  escaped  out  of  the  swine, 
and  overrunning  the  earth  headlong  ?"  he  asked  in  one  of  his 
letters. 

He  had  offered  his  hand,  and  all  the  ambitious  views  which 
it  opened,  to  each  of  the  Miss  Berrys  successively,  but  they  re- 
fused to  bear  his  name,  though  they  still  cheered  his  solitude : 
and,  strange  to  say,  two  of  the  most  admired  and  beloved 
women  of  their  time  remained  single. 

In  1796,  the  sinking  invalid  was  persuaded  to  remove  to 
Berkeley  Square,  to  be  within  reach  of  good  and  prompt  ad- 
vice. He  consented  unwillingly,  for  his  "  Gothic  Castle"  was 
his  favorite  abode.  He  left  it  with  a  presentiment  that  he 
should  see  it  no  more ;  but  he  followed  the  proffered  advice, 
and  in  the  spring  of  the  year  was  established  in  Berkeley 
Square.  His  mind  was  still  clear.  He  seems  to  have  cherish- 
ed to  the  last  a  concern  for  that  literary  fame  which  he  affect- 
ed to  despise.  "  Literature  has,"  he  says,  "  many  revolutions ; 
if  an  author  could  rise  from  the  dead,  after  a  hundred  years, 
what  would  be  his  surprise  at  the  adventures  of  his  works  ! 
I  often  say,  perhaps  my  books  may  be  published  in  Paternos- 
ter Row!"  He  would  indeed  have  been  astonished  at  the 
vast  circulation  of  his  Letters,  and  the  popularity  which  has 
carried  them  into  every  aristocratic  family  in  England.  It  is 
remarkable  that  among  the  middle  and  lower  classes  they  are 
far  less  known.  He  was  essentially  the  chronicler,  as  well  as 
the  wit  and  beau,  of  St.  James's,  of  Windsor,  and  Richmond. 
At  last  he  declared  that  he  should  "  be  content  with  a  sprig 
of  rosemary"  thrown  on  him  when  the  parson  of  the  parish 
commits  his  "  dust  to  dust."  The  end  of  his  now  suffering 
existence  was  near  at  hand.  Irritability,  one  of  the  unpitied 
accompaniments  of  weakness,  seemed  to  compete  with  the 
gathering  clouds  of  mental  darkness  as  the  last  hour  drew  on. 
At  intervals  there  were  flashes  of  a  wit  that  appeared  at  that 
solemn  moment  hardly  natural,  and  that  must  have  startled, 


LET   US    NOT   BE   UNGKATEFUL.  305 

rather  than  pleased,  the  watchful  friends  around  him.  He  be- 
came unjust  in  his  fretfulness,  and  those  who  loved  him  most 
could  not  wish  to  see  him  survive  the  wreck  of  his  intellect. 
Fever  came  on,  and  he  died  on  the  2d  of  March,  1797. 

He  had  collected  his  letters  from  his  friends :  these  epistles 
were  deposited  in  two  boxes,  one  marked  with  an  A.,  the  other 
with  a  B.  The  chest  A.  was  not  to  be  opened  until  the  eldest 
son  of  his  grandniece,  Lady  Laura,  should  attain  the  age  of 
twenty-five.  The  chest  was  found  to  contain  memoirs,  and 
bundles  of  letters  ready  for  publication. 

It  was  singular,  at  the  sale  of  the  effects  at  Strawberry  Hill, 
to  see  this  chest,  with  the  MSS.  in  the  clean  Horatian  hand, 
and  to  reflect  how  poignant  would  have  been  the  anguish  of 
the  writer  could  he  have  seen  his  Gothic  Castle  given  up  for 
fourteen  days,  to  all  that  could  pain  the  living  or  degrade  the 
dead. 

Peace  to  his  manes,  prince  of  letter-writers ;  prince  com- 
panion of  beaux ;  wit  of  the  highest  order !  Without  thy  pen, 
society  in  the  eighteenth  century  would  have  been  to  us  almost 
as  dead  as  the  beau  monde  of  Pompeii,  or  the  remains  of 
Etruscan  leaders  of  the  ton.  Let  us  not  be  ungrateful  to  our 
Horace :  we  owe  him  more  than  we  could  ever  have  calculated 
on  before  we  knew  him  through  his  works :  prejudiced,  he  was 
not  false ;  cold,  he  was  rarely  cruel ;  egotistical,  he  was  seldom 
vainglorious.  Every  age  should  have  a  Horace  Walpole ;  ev- 
ery country  possess  a  chronicler  so  sure,  so  keen  to  perceive, 
so  exact  to  delineate  peculiarities,  manners,  characters,  and 
events. 


GEORGE   SELWTN, 

I  HAVE  heard,  at  times,  of  maiden  ladies  of  a  certain  age 
who  found  pleasure  in  the  affection  of  "  spotted  snakes  with 
double  tongue,  thorny  hedge-hogs,  newts,  and  in  live  worms." 
I  know  that  Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  partial  to  all  that  is  hor- 
rible in  nature.  I  frequently  meet  ladies  who  think  conversa- 
tion lacks  interest  without  the  recital  of  "  melancholy  deaths," 
"  fatal  diseases,"  and  "  mournful  cases ;"  on  ne  dispute  pas  les 
gouts,  and  certainly  the  taste  for  the  night  side  of  nature  seems 
immensely  prevalent  among  the  lower  orders — in  whom,  per- 
haps, the  terrible  only  can  rouse  from  a  sullen  insensibility. 
What  happy  people,  I  always  think  to  myself,  when  I  hear  of 
the  huge  attendance  on  the  last  tragic  performance  at  New- 
gate ;  how  very  little  they  can  see  of  mournful  and  horrible  in 
common  life,  if  they  seek  it  out  so  eagerly,  and  relish  it  so 
thoroughly,  when  they  find  it !  I  don't  know ;  for  my  own 
part,  gaudeamus.  I  have  always  thought  that  the  text,  "  Bless- 
ed are  they  that  mourn,"  referred  to  the  inner  private  life,  not 
to  a  perpetual  display  of  sackcloth  and  ashes ;  but  I  know  not. 
I  can  understand  the  weeping- willow  taste  among  people,  who 
have  too  little  wit  or  too  little  Christianity  to  be  cheerful,  but 
it  is  a  wonder  to  find  the  luxury  of  gloom  united  to  the  keenest 
perception  of  the  laughable  in  such  a  man  as  George  Selwyn. 

If  human  beings  could  be  made  pets,  like  Miss  Tabitha's 
snake  or  toad,  Selwyn  would  have  fondled  a  hangman.  He 
loved  the  noble  art  of  execution,  and  was  a  connoisseur  of  the 
execution  of  the  art.  In  childhood  he  must  have  decapitated 
his  rocking-horse,  hanged  his  doll  in  a  miniature  gallows,  and 
burnt  his  bawbles  at  mimic  stakes.  The  man  whose  calm  eye 
was  watched  for  the  quiet  sparkle  that  announced — and  only 
that  ever  did  announce  it — the  flashing  wit  within  the  mind, 
by  a  gay  crowd  of  loungers  at  Arthur's,  might  be  found  next 
day  rummaging  among  coffins  in  a  damp  vault,  glorying  in  a 
mummy,  confessing  and  preparing  a  live  criminal,  paying  any 
sum  for  a  relic  of  a  dead  one,  or  pressing  eagerly  forward  to 
witness  the  dying  agonies  of  a  condemned  man. 

Yet  Walpole  and  Warner  both  bore  the  highest  testimony 
to  the  goodness  of  his  heart ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  doubt 
that  his  nature  was  as  gentle  as  a  woman's.  There  have  been 
other  instances  of  even  educated  men  delighting  in  scenes  of 


308  ANECDOTES    OF   SELWYN*S   MOTHEE. 

suffering ;  but  in  general  their  characters  have  been  more  or 
less  gross,  their  hearts  more  or  less  insensible.  The  husband 
of  Madame  Recamier  went  daily  to  see  the  guillotine  do  its 
vile  work  during  the  Reign  of  Terror ;  but  then  he  was  a  man 
who  never  wept  over  the  death  of  a  friend.  The  man  who 
was  devoted  to  a  little  child,  whom  he  adopted  and  treated 
with  the  tenderest  care,  was  very  different  from  M.  Recamier 
— and  that  he  had  a  heart  there  is  no  doubt.  He  was  an 
anomaly,  and  famous  for  being  so ;  though,  perhaps,  his  well- 
known  eccentricity  was  taken  advantage  of  by  his  witty  friends, 
and  many  a  story  fathered  on  Selwyn  which  has  no  origin  but 
in  the  brain  of  its  narrator. 

George  Augustus  Selwyn,  then,  famous  for  his  wit,  and  no- 
torious for  his  love  of  horrors,  was  the  second  son  of  a  country 
gentleman,  of  Matson,  in  Gloucestershire,  Colonel  John  Selwyn, 
who  had  been  an  aid-de-camp  of  Marlborough's,  and  afterward 
a  frequenter  of  the  courts  of  the  first  two  Georges.  He  inher- 
ited his  wit  chiefly  from  his  mother,  Mary,  the  daughter  of 
General  Farington  or  Farringdon,  of  the  county  of  Kent.  Wai- 
pole  tells  us  that  she  figured  among  the  beauties  of  the  court 
of  the  Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales,  and  was  bedchamber- 
woman  to  Queen  Caroline.  Her  character  was  not  spotless, 
for  we  hear  of  an  intrigue,  which  her  own  mistress  imparted 
in  confidence  to  the  Duchess  of  Orleans  (the  mother  of  the 
Regent :  they  wrote  on  her  tomb  Cy  gist  V  oisivete,  because 
idleness  is  the  mother  of  all  vice),  and  which  eventually  found 
its  way  into  the  "  Utrecht  Gazette."  It  was  Mrs.  Selwyn,  too, 
who  said  to  George  II.,  that  he  was  the  last  person  she  should 
ever  have  an  intrigue  with,  because  she  was  sure  he  would  tell 
the  queen  of  it :  it  was  well  known  that  that  very  virtuous 
sovereign  made  his  wife  the  confidante  of  his  amours,  which 
was  even  more  shameless  than  young  De  Sevigne's  taking  ad- 
vice from  his  mother  on  his  intrigue  with  Ninon  de  1'Enclos. 
She  seems  to  have  been  reputed  a  wit,  for  Walpole  retains  her 
mots  as  if  they  were  worth  it,  but  they  are  not  very  remarka- 
ble :  for  instance,  when  Miss  Pelham  lost  a  pair  of  diamond 
earrings,  which  she  had  borrowed,  and  tried  to  faint  when  the 
loss  was  discovered,  some  one  called  for  lavender-drops  as  a 
restorative.  "  Pooh  1"  cried  Mrs.  Selwyn,  "  give  her  diamond- 
drops." 

George  Augustus  was  born  on  the  llth  of  August,  1719. 
Walpole  says  that  he  knew  him  at  eight  years  old,  and  as  the 
two  were  at  Eton  about  the  same  time,  it  is  presumed  that 
they  were  contemporaries  there.  In  fact,  a  list  of  the  boys 
there,  in  1732,  furnished  to  Eliot  Warburton,  contains  the 
names  of  Walpole,  Selwyn,  Edgecombe,  and  Con  way,  all  in 


SELWYN'S  COLLEGE  DAYS.  309 

after  life  intimate  friends  and  correspondents.  From  Eton  to 
Oxford  was  the  natural  course,  and  George  was  duly  entered 
at  Hertford  College.  He  did  not  long  grace  Alma  Mater,  for 
the  grand  tour  had  to  be  made,  and  London  life  to  be  begun, 
but  he  was  there  long  enough  to  contract  the  usual  Oxford 
debts,  which  his  father  consented  to  pay  more  than  once.  It 
is  amusing  to  find  the  son  getting  Dr.  Newton  to  write  him  a 
contrite  and  respectful  letter  to  the  angry  parent,  to  liquidate 
the  "  small  accounts"  accumulated  in  London  and  Oxford  as 
early  as  1740.  Three  years  later  we  find  him  in  Paris,  leading 
a  gay  life,  and  writing  respectful  letters  to  England  for  more 
money.  Previously  to  this,  however,  he  had  obtained,  through 
his  father,  the  sinecure  of  Clerk  of  the  Irons  and  surveyor  of 
the  Meltings  at  the  Mint,  a  comfortable  little  appointment,  the 
duties  of  which  were  performed  by  deputy,  while  its  holder 
contented  himself  with  honestly  acknowledging  the  salary,  and 
dining  once  a  week,  when  in  town,  with  the  officers  of  the 
Mint,  and  at  the  Government's  expense. 

So  far  the  young  gentleman  went  on  well  enough,  but  in 
1744  he  returned  to  England,  and  his  rather  rampant  charac- 
ter showed  itself  in  more  than  one  disgraceful  affair. 

Among  the  London  shows  was  Orator  Henley,  a  clergyman 
and  clergyman's  son,  and  a  member  of  St.  John's,  Cambridge. 
He  had  come  to  London  about  this  time,  and  instituted  a  series 
of  lectures  on  universal  knowledge  and  primitive  Christianity. 
He  styled  himself  a  Rationalist,  a  title  then  more  honorable 
than  it  is  now ;  and,  in  grandiloquent  language,  "  spouted"  on 
religious  subjects  to  an  audience  admitted  at  a  shilling  a  head. 
On  one  occasion  he  announced  a  disputation  among  any  two 
of  his  hearers,  offering  to  give  an  impartial  hearing  and  judg- 
ment to  both.  Selwyn  and  the  young  Lord  Carteret  were  pre- 
pared, and  stood  up,  the  one  to  defend  the  ignorance,  the  other 
the  impudence,  of  Orator  Henley  himself;  so,  at  least,  it  is  in- 
ferred from  a  passage  in  D'Israeli  the  Elder.  The  uproar  that 
ensued  can  well  be  imagined.  Henley  himself  made  his  escape 
by  a  back  door.  His  pulpit,  all  gilt,  has  been  immortalized  by 
Pope,  as  "  Henley's  gilt  tub ;"  in  which 

"Imbrown'd  with  native  bronze,  lo!  Henley  stands, 
Tuning  his  voice  and  balancing  his  hands." 

The  affair  gave  rise  to  a  correspondence  between  the  Orator 
and  his  young  friends ;  who,  doubtless,  came  off  best  in  the 
matter. 

This  was  harmless  enough,  but  George's  next  freak  was  not 
so  excusable.  The  circumstances  of  this  affair  are  narrated  in 
a  letter  from  Captain  Nicholson,  his  friend,  to  George  Selwyn  ; 
and  may,  therefore,  be  relied  on.  It  appears  that  being  at  a 


310 

certain  club  in  Oxford,  at  a  wine-party  with  his  friends,  George 
sent  to  a  certain  silversmith's  for  a  certain  chalice,  intrusted 
to  the  shopkeeper  from  a  certain  church  to  be  repaired  in  a 
certain  manner.  This  being  brought,  Master  George — then, 
be  it  remembered,  not  at  the  delicate  and  frivolous  age  of  most 
Oxford  boys,  but  at  the  mature  one  of  six-and-twenty — filled 
it  with  wine,  and  handing  it  round,  used  the  sacred  words, 
"  Drink  this  in  remembrance  of  me."  This,  if  any  thing  can 
be  so,  was  a  blasphemous  parody  of  the  most  sacred  rite  of  the 
Church.  Selwyn  was  not  a  man  to  inquire  whether  that  rite, 
so  practiced,  was  in  effect  the  rite  instituted  by  our  Savior. 
Had  there  even  been  that  doubt  in  his  mind,  which  certainly 
there  is  in  the  minds  of  some,  the  manner  of  indicating  it  would 
have  been  unpardonable.  All  he  could  say  for  himself  was, 
that  he  was  drunk  when  he  did  it.  The  other  plea,  that  he  did 
it  in  ridicule  of  the  transubstantiation  of  the  Romish  Church, 
will  not  hold  water  at  all ;  and  was  most  weakly  put  forward. 
Let  Oxford  Dons  be  what  they  will ;  let  them  put  a  stop  to 
all  religious  inquiry,  and  nearly  expel  Adam  Smith  for  reading 
Hume's  "Essay  on  Human  Nature;"  let  them  be,  as  many  al- 
lege, narrow-minded,  hypocritical,  and  ignorant;  we  can  not 
charge  them  with  wrong-dealing  in  expelling  the  originator  of 
such  open  blasphemy,  which  nothing  can  be  found  to  palliate, 
and  of  which  its  perpetrator  did  not  appear  to  repent,  rather 
complaining  that  the  treatment  of  the  Dons  was  harsh.  The 
act  of  expulsion  was,  of  course,  considered  in  the  same  light 
by  his  numerous  acquaintance,  many  of  whom  condoled  with 
him  on  the  occasion.  It  is  true,  the  Oxford  Dons  are  often 
charged  with  injustice  and  partiality,  and  too  often  the  evi- 
dence is  not  sufficiently  strong  to  excuse  their  judgments ;  but 
in  this  the  evidence  was  not  denied ;  only  a  palliative  was  put 
in,  which  every  one  can  see  through.  The  only  injustice  we 
can  discover  in  this  case  is,  that  the  head  of  Hart  Hall,  as  Hert- 
ford College  was  called,  seems  to  have  been  influenced  in  pro- 
nouncing his  sentence  of  expulsion  by  certain  previous  suspi- 
cions, having  no  bearing  on  the  question  before  him,  which 
had  been  entertained  by  another  set  of  tutors — those  of  Christ- 
church —  where  Selwyn  had  many  friends,  and  where,  prob- 
ably enough,  he  indulged  in  many  collegian's  freaks.  This 
knack  of  bringing  up  a  mere  suspicion,  is  truly  characteristic 
of  the  Oxford  Don,  and  since  the  same  Head  of  his  House — 
Dr.  Newton — acknowledged  that  Selwyn  was,  during  his  Ox- 
ford career,  neither  intemperate,  dissolute,  nor  a  gamester,  it 
is  fair  to  give  him  the  advantage  of  the  doubt,  that  the  judg- 
ment on  the  evidence  had  been  influenced  by  the  considera- 
tion of  "  suspicions"  of  former  misdeeds,  which  had  not  been 


THE   PEOFESSION   OF   A   WIT.  311 

proved,  perhaps  never  committed.  Knowing  the  after  life  of 
the  man,  we  can  scarcely  doubt  that  George  had  led  a  fast  life 
at  the  University,  and  given  cause  for  mistrust.  But  one  may 
ask  whether  Dons,  whose  love  of  drinking,  and  whose  tenden- 
cy to  jest  on  the  most  solemn  subjects,  are  well  known  even 
in  the  present  day,  might  not  have  treated  Selwyn  less  harsh- 
ly for  what  was  done  under  the  influence  of  wine  ?  To  this 
we  are  inclined  to  reply,  that  no  punishment  is  too  severe  for 
profanation ;  and  that  drunkenness  is  not  an  excuse,  but  an 
aggravation.  Selwyn  threatened  to  appeal,  and  took  advice 
on  the  matter.  This,  as  usual,  was  vain.  Many  an  expelled 
man,  more  unjustly  treated  than  Selwyn,  has  talked  of  appeal 
in  vain.  Appeal  to  whom?  to  what?  Appeal  against  men 
who  never  acknowledge  themselves  wrong,  and  who,  to  main- 
tain that  they  are  right,  will  listen  to  evidence  which  they  can 
see  is  contradictory,  and  which  they  know  to  be  worthless ! 
An  appeal  from  an  Oxford  decision  is  as  hopeless  in  the  pres- 
ent day  as  it  was  in  Selwyn's.  He  wisely  left  it  alone,  but  less 
wisely  insisted  on  reappearing  in  Oxford,  against  the  advice  of 
all  his  friends,  whose  characters  were  lost  if  the  ostracized  man 
were  seen  among  them. 

From  this  time  he  entered  upon  his  "profession,"  that  of  a 
wit,  gambler,  club-lounger,  and  man  about  town ;  for  these 
many  characters  are  all  mixed  in  the  one  which  is  generally 
called  "  a  wit."  Let  us  remember  that  he  was  good-hearted, 
and  not  ill-intentioned,  though  imbued  with  the  false  ideas  of 
his  day.  He  was  not  a  great  man,  but  a  great  wit. 

The  localities  in  which  the  trade  of  wit  was  plied  were,  then, 
the  clubs,  and  the  drawing-rooms  of  fashionable  beauties.  The 
former  were  in  Selwyn's  youth  still  limited  in  the  number  of 
their  members,  thirty  constituting  a  large  club ;  and  as  the  sub- 
scribers were  ail  known  to  one  another,  presented  an  admirable 
field  for  display  of  mental  powers  in  conversation.  In  fact,  the 
early  clubs  were  nothing  more  than  dining-societies,  precisely 
the  same  in  theory  as  our  breakfasting  arrangements  at  Oxford, 
which  were  every  whit  as  exclusive,  though  not  balloted  for. 
The  ballot,  however,  and  the  principle  of  a  single  black  ball  suf- 
fering to  negative  an  election,  were  not  only,  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, excusable,  but  even  necessary  for  the  actual  pres- 
ervation of  peace.  Of  course,  in  a  succession  of  dinner-parties, 
if  any  two  members  were  at  all  opposed  to  one  another,  the 
awkwardness  would  be  intolerable.  In  the  present  day,  two 
men  may  belong  to  the  same  club  and  scarcely  meet,  even  on 
the  stairs,  oftener  than  once  or  twice  in  a  season. 

Gradually,  however,  in  the  place  of  the  "feast  of  reason  and 
flow  of  soul"  and  wine,  instead  of  the  evenings  spent  in  toast- 


312  THE   THIRST   FOR   HAZARD. 

ing,  talking,  emptying  bottles  and  filling  heads,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  old  Kit-kat,  men  took  to  the  monstrous  amusement  of 
examining  fate,  and  on  club-tables  the  dice  rattled  far  more 
freely  than  the  glasses,  though  these  latter  were  not  necessa- 
rily abandoned.  Then  came  the  thirst  for  hazard  that  brought 
men  early  in  the  day  to  try  their  fortune,  and  thus  made  the 
club-room  a  lounge.  Selwyn  was  an  habitual  frequenter  of 
Brookes's. 

Brookes's  was,  perhaps,  the  principal  club  of  the  day,  though 
"  White's  Chocolate  House"  was  almost  on  a  par  with  it.  But 
Selwyn  did  not  confine  his  attention  solely  to  this  club.  It 
was  the  fashion  to  belong  to  as  many  of  them  as  possible,  and 
Wilberforce  mentions  no  less  than  five  to  which  he  himself 
belonged  :  Brookes's,  Boodle's,  White's,  Miles  and  Evans's  in 
New  Palace  Yard,  and  Goosetree's.  As  their  names  imply, 
these  were  all,  originally,  mere  coffee-houses,  kept  by  men  of 
the  above  names.  One  or  two  rooms  then  sufficed  for  the  re- 
quirements of  a  small  party,  and  it  was  not  till  the  members 
were  greatly  increased  that  the  coffee-house  rose  majestically 
to  the  dignity  of  a  bow-window,  and  was  entirely  and  exclu- 
sively appropriated  to  the  requirements  of  the  club. 

This  was  especially  the  case  with  White's,  of  which  so  many 
of  the  wits  and  talkers  of  Selwyn's  day  were  members.  Who 
does  not  know  that  bow-window  at  the  top  of  St.  James's  Street, 
where  there  are  sure,  about  three  or  four  in  the  afternoon,  to 
be  at  least  three  gentlemen,  two  old  and  one  young,  standing, 
to  the  exclusion  of  light  within,  talking  and  contemplating  the 
oft-repeated  movement  outside.  White's  was  established  as 
early  as  1698,  and  was  thus  one  of  the  original  coffee-houses. 
It  was  then  kept  by  a  man  named  Arthur :  here  Chesterfield 
gamed  and  talked,  to  be  succeeded  by  Gilly  Williams,  Charles 
Townshend,  and  George  Selwyn.  The  old  house  was  burnt 
down  in  1733.  It  was  at  White's — or  as  Hogarth  calls  it  in 
his  pictorial  squib,  Black's — that,  when  a  man  fell  dead  at  the 
door,  he  was  lugged  in  and  bets  made  as  to  whether  he  was 
dead  or  no.  The  surgeon's  operations  were  opposed,  for  fear 
of  disturbing  the  bets.  Here,  too,  did  George  Selwyn  and 
Charles  Townshend  pit  their  wit  against  wit ;  and  here  Pel- 
ham  passed  all  the  time  he  was  not  forced  to  devote  to  poli- 
tics. In  short  it  was,  next  to  Brookes's,  the  club  of  the  day, 
and  perhaps  in  some  respects  had  a  greater  renown  than  even 
that  famous  club,  and  its  play  was  as  high. 

In  Brookes's  and  White's  Selwyn  appeared  with  a  twofold 
fame,  that  of  a  pronouncer  of  bon-mots,  and  that  of  a  lover  of 
horrors.  His  wit  was  of  the  quaintest  order.  He  was  no 
inveterate  talker,  like  Sydney  Smith ;  no  clever  dissimulator, 


EEYNOLDS'S    COXVEKSATION-PIECE.  313 

like  Mr.  Hook.  Calmly,  almost  sanctimoniously,  he  uttered 
those  neat  and  telling  sayings  which  the  next  day  passed  over 
England  as  "  Selwyn's  last."  Walpole  describes  his  manner 
admirably — his  eyes  turned  up,  his  mouth  set  primly,  a  look 
almost  of  melancholy  in  his  whole  face.  Reynolds,  in  his 
Conversation-piece,  celebrated  when  in  the  Strawberry  Collec- 
tion, and  representing  Selwyn  leaning  on  a  chair,  Gilly  Wil- 
liams, crayon  in  hand,  and  Dick  Edgecombe  by  his  side,  has 
caught  the  pseudo-solemn  expression  of  his  face  admirably. 
The  ease  of  the  figure,  one  hand  empochee,  the  other  holding 
a  paper  of  epigrams,  or  what  not,  the  huge  waistcoat  with  a 
dozen  buttons  and  huge  flaps,  the  ruffled  sleeve,  the  bob-wig, 
all  belong  to  the  outer  man ;  but  the  calm,  quiet,  almost  in- 
quiring face,  the  look  half  of  melancholy,  half  of  reproach,  and, 
as  the  Milesian  would  say,  the  other  half  of  sleek  wisdom ;  the 
long  nose,  the  prim  mouth  and  joined  lips,  the  elevated  brow, 
and  beneath  it  the  quiet  contemplative  eye,  contemplative  not 
of  heaven  or  hell,  but  of  this  world  as  it  had  seen  it,  in  its  most 
worldly  point  of  view,  yet  twinkling  with  a  flashing  thought 
of  incongruity  made  congruous,  are  the  indices  of  the  inner 
man.  Most  of  our  wits,  it  must  have  been  seen,  have  had  some 
other  interest  and  occupation  in  life  than  that  of  "making 
wit :"  some  have  been  authors,  some  statesmen,  some  soldiers, 
some  wildrakes,  and  some  players  of  tricks:  Selwyn  had  no 
profession  but  that  of  diseur  de  bans  mots;  for,  though  he 
sat  in  the  House,  he  took  no  prominent  part  in  politics ;  though 
he  gambled  extensively,  he  did  not  game  for  the  sake  of  mon- 
ey only.  Thus  his  life  was  that  merely  of  a  London  bachelor, 
with  a  few  incidents  to  mark  it,  and  therefore  his  memoir  must 
resolve  itself  more  or  less  into  a  series  of  anecdotes  of  his  ec- 
centricities and  list  of  his  witticisms. 

His  friend  Walpole  gives  us  an  immense  number  of  both, 
not  ah1  of  a  first-rate  nature,  nor  many  interesting  in  the  present 
day.  Selwyn,  calm  as  he  was,  brought  out  his  sayings  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment,  and  their  appropriateness  to  the  occasion 
was  one  of  their  greatest  recommendations.  A  good  saying, 
like  a  good  sermon,  depends  much  on  its  delivery,  and  loses 
much  in  print.  Nothing  less  immortal  than  wit!  To  take 
first,  however,  the  eccentricities  of  his  character,  and  especially 
his  love  of  horrors,  we  find  anecdotes  by  the  dozen  retailed  of 
him.  It  was  so  well  known,  that  Lord  Holland,  when  dying, 
ordered  his  servant  to  be  sure  to  admit  Mr.  Selwyn  if  he  called 
to  inquire  after  him,  "  for  if  I  am  alive,"  said  he,  "  I  shall  be 
glad  to  see  him,  and  if  I  am  dead,  he  will  be  glad  to  see  me." 
The  name  of  Holland  leads  us  to  an  anecdote  told  by  Walpole. 
Selwyn  was  looking  over  Cornbury  with  Lord  Abergavenny 

O 


314  A   MOST   IMPORTANT   COMMUNICATION. 

and  Mrs.  Frere,  "  who  loved  one  another  a  little,"  and  was  dis- 
gusted with  the  frivolity  of  the  woman  who  could  take  no  in- 
terest in  any  thing  worth  seeing.  "You  don't  know  what 
you  missed  in  the  other  room,"  he  cried  at  last,  peevishly. 
"  Why,  what  ?"  "  Why,  my  Lord  Holland's  picture."  "  Well, 
what  is  my  Lord  Holland  to  me?"  "Don't  you  know?" 
whispered  the  wit  mysteriously,  "  that  Lord  Holland's  body 
lies  in  the  same  vault  in  Kensington  Church  with  my  Lord 
Abergavenny's  mother  ?"  "  Lord !  she  was  so  obliged,"  says 
Walpole,  "  and  thanked  him  a  thousand  times !" 

Selwyn  knew  the  vaults  as  thoroughly  as  old  Anthony 
Wood  knew  the  brasses.  The  elder  Craggs  had  risen  by  the 
favor  of  Marlborough,  whose  footman  he  had  been,  and  his  son 
was  eventually  a  Secretary  of  State.  Arthur  Moore,  the  fa- 
ther of  James  Moore  Smyth,  of  whom  Pope  wrote — 

"Arthur,  whose  giddy  son  neglects  the  laws, 
Imputes  to  me  and  my  damned  works  the  cause," 

had  worn  a  livery  too.  When  Craggs  got  into  a  coach  with 
him,  he  exclaimed,  "  Why,  Arthur,  I  am  always  getting  up 
behind,  are  not  you  ?"  Walpole  having  related  this  story  to 
Selwyn,  the  latter  told  "him,  as  a  most  important  communica- 
tion, that  Arthur  Moore  had  had  his  coffin  chained  to  that  of 
his  mistress.  "Lord!  how  do  you  know?"  asked  Horace. 
"  Why,  I  saw  them  the  other  day  in  a  vault  at  St.  Giles's." 
"  Oh,  your  servant,  Mr.  Selwyn,"  cried  the  man  who  showed 
the  tombs  at  Westminster  Abbey,  "  I  expected  to  see  you  here 
the  other  day  when  the  old  Duke  of  Richmond's  body  was 
taken  up." 

Criminals  were,  of  course,  included  in  his  passion.  Walpole 
affirms  that  he  had  a  great  share  in  bringing  Lord  Dacre's 
footman,  who  had  murdered  the  butler,  to  confess  his  crime. 
In  writing  the  confession,  the  ingenious  plush  coolly  stopped 
and  asked  how  "  murder"  was  spelt.  But  it  mattered  little  to 
George  whether  the  criminal  were  alive  or  dead,  and  he  de- 
fended his  eccentric  taste  with  his  usual  wit ;  and  when  ral- 
lied by  some  women  for  going  to  see  the  Jacobite  Lord  Lovat's 
head  cut  off,  he  retorted  sharply — "  I  made  full  amends,  for  I 
went  to  see  it  sewn  on  again."  Pie  had  indeed  done  so,  and 
given  the  company  at  the  undertaker's  a  touch  of  his  favorite 
blasphemy,  for  when  the  man  of  coffins  had  done  his  work, 
and  laid  the  body  in  its  box,  Selwyn,  imitating  the  voice  of  the 
Lord  Chancellor  at  the  trial,  muttered,  "  My  Lord  Lovat,  you 
may  rise"  He  said  a  better  thing  on  the  trial  of  a  confeder- 
ate of  Lovat's,  that  Lord  Kilmarnock,  with  whom  the  ladies 
fell  so  desperately  in  love  as  he  stood  on  his  defense.  Mrs. 


AN   AMATEUR   HEADSMAN.  315 

Bethel,  who  was  famous  for  a  hatchet-face,  was  among  the  fair 
spectators :  "  What  a  shame  it  is,"  quoth  the  wit,  "  to  turn 
her  face  to  the  prisoners  before  they  are  condemned !"  Terri- 
ble, indeed,  was  that  instrument  to  those  men,  who  had  in  the 
heat  of  battle  so  gallantly  met  sword  and  blunderbuss.  The 
slow,  sure  approach  of  the  day  of  the  scaffold  was  a  thousand 
times  worse  than  the  roar  of  cannon.  Lord  Cromarty  was 
pardoned,  solely,  it  was  said,  from  pity  for  his  poor  wife,  who 
was  at  the  time  of  the  trial  far  advanced  in  pregnancy.  It  was 
affirmed  that  the  child  born  had  a  distinct  mark  of  an  axe  on 
his  neck.  Credat  Judceus !  Walpole  used  to  say  that  Sel- 
wyn  never  thought  but  a  la  tete  tranchee,  and  that  when  he 
went  to  have  a  tooth  drawn,  he  told  the  dentist  he  would  drop 
his  handkerchief  by  way  of  signal.  Certain  it  is  that  he  did 
love  an  execution,  whatever  he  or  his  friends  may  have  done 
to  remove  the  impression  of  this  extraordinary  taste.  Some 
better  men  than  Selwyn  have  had  the  same,  and  Macaulay  ac- 
cuses Penn  of  a  similar  affection.  The  best-known  anecdote 
of  Selwyn's  peculiarity  relates  to  the  execution  of  Damiens, 
who  was  torn  with  red-hot  pincers,  and  finally  quartered  by 
four  horses,  for  the  attempt  to  assassinate  Louis  XV.  On  the 
day  fixed,  George  mingled  with  the  crowd  plainly  dressed,  and 
managed  to  press  forward  close  to  the  place  of  torture.  The 
executioner  observing  him,  eagerly  cried  out,  "  Faites  place 
pour  Monsieur  /  c'est  un  Anglais  et  un  amateur  ;  or,  as  an- 
other version  goes,  he  was  asked  if  he  was  not  himself  a  bour- 
reau.  " JVon,  Monsieur"  he  is  said  to  have  answered,  "je 
rial  pas  cet  honneur  •  je  ne  suis  qu*un  amateur."  The  story 
is  more  than  apocryphal,  for  Selwyn  is  not  the  only  person 
of  whom  it  has  been  told ;  and  he  was  even  accused,  accord- 
ing to  Wraxall,  of  going  to  executions  in  female  costume. 
George  Selwyn  must  have  passed  as  a  "  remarkably  fine  wom- 
an," in  that  case. 

It  is  only  justice  to  him  to  say  that  the  many  stories  of  his 
attending  executions  were  supposed  to  be  inventions  of  Sir 
Charles  Hanbury  Williams,  another  wit,  and  of  Chesterfield, 
another,  and  a  rival.  In  confirmation,  it  is  adduced  that  when 
the  former  had  been  relating  some  new  account,  and  an  old 
friend  of  Selwyn's  expressed  his  surprise  that  he  had  never 
heard  the  tale  before,  the  hero  of  it  replied  quietly,  "  No  won- 
der at  all,  for  Sir  Charles  has  just  invented  it,  and  knows  that 
I  will  not  by  contradiction  spoil  the  pleasure  of  the  company 
he  is  so  highly  entertaining." 

Wit  has  been  called  "  the  eloquence  of  indifference ;"  no  one 
seems  ever  to  have  been  so  indifferent  about  every  thing  but 
his  little  daughter,  'as  George  Selwyn.  He  always,  however, 


316  THE   ELOQUENCE    OF   INDIFFERENCE. 

took  up  the  joke,  and  when  asked  why  he  had  not  been  to  see 
one  Charles  Fox,  a  low  criminal,  hanged  at  Tyburn,  answer- 
ed, quietly,  "  I  make  a  point  of  never  going  to  rehearsals" 

Selwyn's  love  for  this  kind  of  thing,  to  believe  his  most  inti- 
mate friend,  Horace  Walpole,  was  quite  a  fact.  His  friend 
relates  that  he  even  bargained  for  the  High  Sheriff's  wand, 
after  it  was  broken,  at  the  condemnation  of  the  gallant  Lords, 
but  said,  "that  he  behaved  so  like  an  attorney  the  first  day, 
and  so  like  a  pettifogger  the  second,  that  he  would  not  take 
it  to  light  his  fire  with." 

The  State  Trials,  of  course,  interested  George  more  than 
any  other  in  his  eventless  life:  he  dined  after  the  sentence 
with  the  celebrated  Lady  Townshend,  who  was  so  devoted  to 
Lord  Kilmarnock — 

"Pitied  by  gentle  minds,  Kilmarnock  died" — JOHNSON. 

that  she  is  said  to  have  even  staid  under  his  windows,  when 
he  was  in  prison ;  but  he  treated  her  anxiety  with  such  light- 
ness that  the  lady  burst  into  tears,  and  "flung  up  stairs." 
"  George,"  writes  Walpole  to  Montagu,  "  coolly  took  Mrs. 
Dorcas,  her  woman,  and  bade  her  sit  down  to  finish  the  bot- 
tle. '  And  pray,'  said  Dorcas,  '  do  you  think  my  lady  will 
be  prevailed  upon  to  let  me  go  and  see  the  execution  ?  I  have 
a  friend  that  has  promised  to  take  care  of  me,  and  I  can  lie  in 
the  Tower  the  night  before.'  Could  she  have  talked  more 
pleasantly  to  Selwyn  ?" 

His  contemporaries  certainly  believed  in  his  love  of  New- 
gatism;  for  when  Walpole  had  caught  a  housebreaker  in  a 
neighbor's  area,  he  immediately  dispatched  a  messenger  to 
White's  for  the  philo-criminalist,  who  was  sure  to  be  playing 
at  the  Club  any  time  before  daylight.  It  happened  that  the 
drawer  at  the  "  Chocolate-house"  had  been  himself  lately  rob- 
bed, and  therefore  stole  to  George  with  fear  and  trembling, 
and  muttered  mysteriously  to  him,  "  Mr.  Walpole's  compli- 
ments, and  he  has  got  a  housebreaker  for  you."  Of  course, 
Selwyn  obeyed  the  summons  readily,  and  the  event  concluded, 
as  such  events  do  nine  times  out  of  ten,  with  a  quiet  capture, 
and  much  ado  about  nothing. 

The  Selwyns  were  a  powerful  family  in  Gloucestershire, 
owning  a  great  deal  of  property  in  the  neighborhood  of  Glou- 
cester itself.  The  old  colonel  had  represented  that  city  in 
Parliament  for  many  years.  On  the  5th  of  November,  1751, 
he  died.  His  eldest  son  had  gone  a  few  months  before  him. 
This  son  had  been  also  at  Eton,  and  was  an  early  friend  of 
Horace  Walpole  and  General  Con  way.  His  death  left  George 
sole  heir  to  the  property,  and  very  much  he  seemed  to  have 
needed  the  heritage. 


THE   FAMILY    OP   THE   SELWYNS.  317 

The  property  of  the  Selwyns  lay  in  the  picturesque  district 
of  the  Northern  Cotswolds.  Any  body  who  has  passed  a  day 
in  the  dull  city  of  Gloucester,  which  seems  to  break  into  any 
thing  like  life  only  at  an  election,  lying  dormant  in  the  inter- 
vals, has  been  glad  to  rush  out  to  enjoy  air  and  a  fine  view  on 
Robin  Hood's  Hill,  a  favorite  walk  with  the  worthy  citizens, 
though  what  the  jovial  archer  of  merry  Sherwood  had  to  do 
with  it,  or  whether  he  was  ever  in  Gloucestershire  at  all,  I 
profess  I  know  not.  Walpole  describes  the  hill  with  hu- 
morous exaggeration.  "  It  is  lofty  enough  for  an  alp,  yet  is 
a  mountain  of  turf  to  the  very  top,  has  wood  scattered  all  over 
it,  springs  that  long  to  be  cascades  in  many  places  of  it,  and 
from  the  summit  it  beats  even  Sir  George  Littleton's  views, 
by  having  the  city  of  Gloucester  at  its  foot,  and  the  Severn 
widening  to  the  horizon."  On  the  very  summit  of  the  next 
hill,  Chosen-down,  is  a  solitary  church,  and  the  legend  saith 
that  the  good  people  who  built  it  did  so  originally  at  the  foot 
of  the  steep  mount,  but  that  the  Virgin  Mary  carried  up  the 
stones  by  night,  till  the  builder,  in  despair,  was  compelled  to 
erect  it  on  the  top.  Others  attribute  the  mysterious  act  to  a 
very  different  personage,  and  with  apparently  more  reason,  for 
the  position  of  the  church  must  keep  many  an  old  sinner  from 
hearing  service. 

At  Matson,  then,  on  Robin  Hood's  Hill,  the  Selwyns  lived : 
Walpole  says  that  the  "  house  is  small,  but  neat.  King  Charles 
lay  here  at  the  siege,  and  the  Duke  of  York,  with  typical  fury, 
hacked  and  hewed  the  window-shutters  of  his  chamber  as  a 
memorandum  of  his  being  there.  And  here  is  the  very  flower- 
pot and  counterfeit  association  for  which  Bishop  Sprat  was 
taken  up,  and  the  Duke  of  Marlborough  sent  to  the  Tower. 
The  reservoirs  on  the  hill  supply  the  city.  The  late  Mr.  Sel- 
wyn  governed  the  borough  by  them — and  I  believe  by  some 
wine  too."  Probably,  or  at  least  by  some  beer,  if  the  modern 
electors  be  not  much  altered  from  their  forefathers. 

Besides  this  important  estate,  the  Selwyns  had  another  at 
Ludgershall,  and  their  influence  there  was  so  complete,  that 
they  might  fairly  be  said  to  give  one  seat  to  any  one  they  chose. 
With  such  double  barrels  George  Selwyn  was,  of  course,  a 
great  gun  in  the  House,  but  his  interest  lay  far  more  in  piquet 
and  pleasantry  than  in  politics  and  patriotism,  and  he  was 
never  fired  off  with  any  but  the  blank  cartridges  of  his  two 
votes.  His  parliamentary  career,  begun  in  1747,  lasted  more 
than  forty  years,  yet  was  entirely  without  distinction.  He, 
however,  amused  both  parties  with  his  wit,  and  by  snoring  in 
unison  with  Lord  North.  This  must  have  been  trying  to  Mr. 
Speaker  Cornwall,  who  was  longing,  no  doubt,  to  snore  also, 


318  "THE  MAN  OP  THE  PEOPLE." 

and  dared  not.  He  was  probably  the  only  Speaker  who  pre- 
sided over  so  august  an  assembly  as  our  English  Parliament 
with  a  pewter  pot  of  porter  at  his  elbow,  sending  for  more 
and  more  to  Bellamy's,  till  his  heavy  eyes  closed  of  themselves. 
A  modern  M.  P.,  carried  back  by  some  fancies  to  "  the  Senate" 
of  those  days,  might  reasonably  doubt  whether  his  guide  had 
not  taken  him  by  mistake  to  some  Coal-hole  or  Cider-cellar, 
presided  over  by  some  former  Baron  Nicholson,  and  whether 
the  furious  eloquence  of  Messrs.  Fox,  Pitt,  and  Burke  were  not 
got  up  for  the  amusement  of  an  audience  admitted  at  sixpence 
a  head. 

Selwyn's  political  jokes  were  the  delight  of  Bellamy's.  He 
said  that  Fox  and  Pitt  reminded  him  of  Hogarth's  Idle  and 
Industrious  Apprentices.  When  asked  by  some  one,  as  he 
sauntered  out  of  the  House — "  Is  the  House  up  ?"  he  replied, 
"  No,  but  Burke  is."  The  length  of  Burke's  elaborate  spoken 
essays  was  proverbial,  and  obtained  for  him  the  name  of  the 
"  Dinner-bell."  Fox  was  talking  one  day  at  Brookes's  of  the 
advantageous  peace  he  had  made  with  France,  and  that  he 
had  even  induced  that  country  to  give  up  the  gum  trade  to 
England.  "  That,  Charles,"  quoth  Selwyn,  sharply,  "  I  am  not 
at  all  surprised  at ;  for  having  drawn  your  teeth,  they  would 
be  d — d  fools  to  quarrel  with  you  about  gums."  Fox  was 
often  the  object  of  his  good-natured  satire.  As  every  one 
knows,  his  boast  was  to  be  called  "  The  Man  of  the  People," 
though  perhaps  he  cared  as  little  for  the  great  unwashed  as  for 
the  wealth  and  happiness  of  the  waiters  at  his  clubs.  Every 
one  knows,  too,  what  a  dissolute  life  he  led  for  many  years. 
In  1782,  we  are  told  by  Walpole,  he  was  "languishing  at  the 
feet"  of  the  notorious  and  abandoned  Mrs.  Robinson.  "  Well," 
says  Selwyn,  calmly,  "  whom  should  *  The  Man  of  the  People' 
live  with,  but  the  woman  of  the  people"  Selwyn's  sleepiness 
was  well  known.  He  slept  in  the  House ;  he  slept,  after  losing 
£800,  "  and  with  as  many  more  before  him,"  upon  the  gaming- 
table, with  the  dice-box  "  stamped  close  to  his  ears ;"  he  slept, 
or  half  slept,  even  in  conversation,  which  he  seems  to  have 
caught  by  fits  and  starts.  Thus  it  was  that  words  he  heard 
suggested  different  senses,  partly  from  being  only  dimly  asso- 
ciated with  the  subject  on  the  tapis.  So,  when  they  were 
talking  around  of  the  war,  and  whether  it  should  be  a  sea-war 
or  a  Continental  war,  Selwyn  woke  up  just  enough  to  say,  "  I 
am  for  a  sea-war  and  a  Continent  admiral." 

When  Fox  had  ruined  himself,  and  a  subscription  for  him 
was  talked  of,  some  one  asked  how  they  thought  "  he  would 
take  it."  "  Take  it,"  cried  Selwyn,  suddenly  lighting  up,  "  why, 
quarterly  to  be  sure." 


TRUE   WIT.  319 

His  parliamentary  career  was  then  quite  uneventful ;  but  at 
the  dissolution  in  1780,  he  found  that  his  security  at  Glouces- 
ter was  threatened.  He  was  not  Whig  enough  for  that  con- 
stituency, and  had  throughout  supported  the  war  with  Amer- 
ica. He  offered  himself,  of  course,  but  was  rejected  with  scorn, 
and  forced  to  fly  for  a  seat  to  Ludgershall.  Walpole  writes 
to  Lady  Ossory :  "  They"  (the  Gloucester  people)  "  hanged  him 
in  effigy,  and  dressed  up  a  figure  of  Mie-Mie"  (his  adopted 
daughter),  "and  pinned  on  its  breast  these  words,  alluding  to 
the  gallows :  '  This  is  what  I  told  you  you  would  come  to !' " 
From  Gloucester  he  went  to  Ludgershall,  where  he  was  re- 
ceived by  ringing  of  bells  and  bonfires.  "  Being  driven  out 
of  my  capital,"  said  he,  "  and  coming  into  that  country  of  tur- 
nips, where  I  was  adored,  I  seemed  to  be  arrived  in  my  Han- 
overian dominions" — no  bad  hit  at  George  II.  For  Ludgers- 
hall he  sat  for  many  years,  with  Sir  Nathaniel  Wraxall,  whose 
"  Menioirs"  are  better  known  than  trusted,ras  colleague.  That 
writer  says  of  him,  that  he  was  "  thoroughly  well  versed  in 
our  history,  and  master  of  many  curious  as  well  as  secret 
anecdotes,  relative  to  the  houses  of  Stuart  and  Brunswick." 

Another  bon-mot,  not  in  connection  with  politics,  is  reported 
by  Walpole  as  "  incomparable."  Lord  George  Gordon  asked 
him  if  the  Ludgershall  electors  would  take  him  (Lord  George) 
for  Ludgershall,  adding, "  if  you  would  recommend  me,  they 
would  choose  me,  if  I  came  from  the  coast  of  Africa."  "  That 
is  according  to  what  part  of  the  coast  you  came  from ;  they 
would  certainly,  if  you  came  from  the  Guinea  coast."  "  Now, 
Madam,"  writes  his  friend, "  is  not  this  true  inspiration  as  well 
as  true  wit?  Had  any  one  asked  him  in  which  of  the  four 
quarters  of  the  world  Guinea  is  situated,  could  he  have  told?" 
Walpole  did  not  perhaps  know  Master  George  thoroughly — 
he  was  neither  so  ignorant  nor  so  indifferent  as  he  seemed. 
His  manner  got  him  the  character  of  being  both ;  but  he  was 
a  still  fool  that  ran  deep. 

Though  Selwyn  did  little  with  his  two  votes,  he  made  them 
pay ;  and  in  addition  to  the  post  in  the  Mint,  got  out  of  the 
party  he  supported  those  of  Registrar  to  the  Court  of  Chan- 
cery in  the  Island  of  Barbadoes,  a  sinecure  done  by  deputy, 
Surveyor  of  the  Crown  Lands,  and  Paymaster  to  the  Board 
of  Works.  The  wits  of  White's  added  the  title  of  "  Receiver 
General  of  Waif  and  Stray  Jokes."  It  is  said  that  his  hostili- 
ty to  Sheridan  arose  from  the  latter  having  lost  him  the  office 
in  the  Works  in  1 782,  when  Burke's  Bill  for  reducing  the  Civil 
List  came  into  operation ;  but  this  is  not  at  all  probable,  as  his 
dislike  was  shown  long  before  that  period.  Apropos  of  the 
Board  of  Works,  Walpole  gives  another  anecdote.  On  one 


320  SOME  OF  SELWYN'S  WITTY  SAYINGS. 

occasion,  in  1780,  Lord  George  Gordon  had  been  the  only  op- 
ponent on  a  division.  Selwyn  afterward  took  him  in  his  car- 
riage to  White's.  "  I  have  brought,"  said  he,  "  the  whole  Op- 
position in  my  coach,  and  I  hope  one  coach  will  always  hold 
them,  if  they  mean  to  take  away  the  Board  of  Works." 

Undoubtedly,  Selwyn's  wit  wanted  the  manner  of  the  man 
to  make  it  so  popular,  for,  as  we  read  it,  it  is  often  rather  mild. 
To  string  a  list  of  them  together  : 

Lady  Coventry  showed  him  her  new  dress  all  covered  with 
spangles  as  large  as  shillings.  "Bless  my  soul,"  said  he, 
"  you'll  be  change  for  a  guinea." 

Fox,  debtor  and  bankrupt  as  he  was,  had  taken  lodgings 
with  Fitzpatrick  at  an  oilman's,  in  Piccadilly.  Every  one 
pitied  the  landlord,  who  would  certainly  be  ruined.  "  Not  a 
bit  of  it,"  quoth  George  ;  "  he'll  have  the  credit  of  keeping  at 
his  house  the  finest  pickles  in  London." 

Sometimes  there  was  a  good  touch  of  satire  on  his  times. 
When  "High  Life'Below  Stairs"  was  first  acted,  Selwyn  vow- 
ed he  would  go  and  see  it,  for  he  was  sick  of  low  life  above 
stairs ;  and  when  a  waiter  at  his  Club  had  been  convicted  of 
felony,  "  What  a  horrid  idea,"  said  he,  "  the  man  will  give  of 
us  in  Newgate !" 

Dining  with  Bruce,  the  Abyssinian  traveler,  he  heard  him 
say,  in  answer  to  a  question  about  musical  instruments  in  the 
East,  "  I  believe  I  saw  one  lyre  there."  "  Ay,"  whispered 
the  wit  to  his  neighbor,  "  and  there's  one  less  since  he  left  the 
country."  Bruce  shared  the  travelers'  reputation  of  drawing 
the  long-bow  to  a  very  considerable  extent. 

Two  of  Selwyn's  best  mots  were  about  one  of  the  Foley 
family,  who  were  so  deeply  in  debt  that  they  had  "  to  go  to 
Texas,"  or  Boulogne,  to  escape  the  money-lenders.  "  That," 
quoth  Selwyn,  "is  &  pass-over  which  will  not  be  much  relished 
by  the  Jews."  And  again,  when  it  was  said  that  they  would 
be  able  to  cancel  their  father's  old  will  by  a  new-found  one,  he 
profanely  indulged  in  a  pun  far  too  impious  to  be  repeated  in 
our  day,  however  it  may  have  been  relished  in  Selwyn's  time. 

A  picture  called  "  The  Daughter  of  Pharaoh,"  in  which  the 
princess  royal  and  her  attendant  ladies  figured  as  the  saver  of 
Moses  and  her  handmaids,  was  being  exhibited  in  1782,  at  a 
house  opposite  Brookes's,  and  was  to  be  the  companion-piece 
to  Copley's  "  Death  of  Chatham."  George  said  he  could  rec- 
ommend a  better  companion,  to  wit — the  "Sons  of  Pharaoh" 
at  the  opposite  house.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  explain  that 
pharaoh  or  faro,  was  the  most  popular  game  of  hazard  then 
played. 

Walking  one  day  with  Lord  Pembroke,  and  being  besieged 


8KLWYN  ACKNOWLEDGES  "THE   SOVEREIGNTY  OP  T1IE  PEOPLE. 


THE   SOVEREIGNTY    OP   THE   PEOPLE.  323 

by  a  troop  of  small  chimney-climbers,  begging — Selwyn,  after 
bearing  their  importunity  very  calmly  for  some  time,  suddenly 
turned  round,  and  with  the  most  serious  face  thus  addressed 
them — "  I  have  often  heard  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people ; 
I  suppose  your  highnesses  are  in  Court  mourning."  We  can 
well  imagine  the  eifect  of  this  sedate  speech  on  the  astonished 
youngsters. 

Pelham's  truculency  was  well  known.  Walpole  and  his 
friend  went  to  the  sale  of  his  plate  in  1755.  "  Lord,"  said  the 
wit,  "how  many  toads  have  been  eaten  off  these  plates!" 

The  jokes  were  not  always  very  delicate.  When,  in  the 
middle  of  the  summer  of  1751,  Lord  North,  who  had  been 
twice  married  before,  espoused  the  widow  of  the  Earl  of 
Rockingham,  who  was  fearfully  stout,  Selwyn  suggested  that 
she  had  been  kept  in  ice  for  three  days  before  the  wedding. 
So,  too,  when  there  was  talk  of  another  embonpoint  person- 
age going  to  America  during  the  war,  he  remarked  that  she 
would  make  a  capital  breast-work. 

One  of  the  few  epigrams  he  ever  wrote — if  not  the  only  one, 
of  which  there  is  some  doubt — was  in  the  same  spirit.  It  is 
on  the  discovery  of  a  pair  of  shoes  in  a  certain  lady's  bed : 

"Well  may  Suspicion  shake  its  head — 

Well  may  Clorinda's  spouse  be  jealous, 
When  the  dear  wanton  takes  to  bed 
Her  very  shoes — because  they're  fellows." 

Such  are  a  few  specimens  of  George  Selwyn's  wit ;  and  doz- 
ens more  are  dispersed  through  Walpole's  Letters.  As  Eliot 
Warburton  remarks,  they  do  not  give  us  a  very  high  idea  of 
the  humor  of  the  period ;  but  two  things  must  be  taken  into 
consideration  before  we  deprecate  their  author's  title  to  the 
dignity  and  reputation  he  enjoyed  so  abundantly  among  his 
contemporaries:  they  are  not  necessarily  the  best  specimens 
that  might  have  been  given,  if  more  of  his  mots  had  been 
preserved;  and  their  effect  on  his  listeners  depended  more 
on  the  manner  of  delivery  than  on  the  matter.  That  they 
were  improvised  and  unpremeditated  is  another  important 
consideration.  It  is  quite  unfair  to  compare  them,  as  War- 
burton  does,  with  the  hebdomadal  trash  of  "  Punch,"  though 
perhaps  they  would  stand  the  comparison  pretty  well.  It  is 
one  thing  to  force  wit  with  plenty  of  time  to  invent  and  med- 
itate it — another  to  have  so  much  wit  within  you  that  you  can 
bring  it  out  on  any  occasion ;  one  thing  to  compose  a  good  fan- 
cy for  money — another  to  utter  it  only  when  it  flashes  through 
the  brain. 

But  it  matters  little  what  we  in  the  present  day  may  think 
of  Selwyn's  wit,  for  conversation  is  spoiled  by  bottling,  and 


324  SELWYN'S  LOVE  FOR  CHILDREN. 

should  be  drawn  fresh  when  wanted.  Selwyn's  companions 
— all  men  of  wit,  more  or  less,  affirmed  him  to  be  the  most 
amusing  man  of  his  day,  and  that  was  all  the  part  he  had  to 
play.  No  real  wit  ever  hopes  to  talk  for  posterity ;  and  writ- 
ten wit  is  of  a  very  different  character  to  the  more  sparkling, 
if  less  solid,  creations  of  a  moment. 

We  have  seen  Selwyn  in  many  points  of  view,  not  all  very 
creditable  to  him :  first,  expelled  from  Oxford  for  blasphemy ; 
next,  a  professed  gambler  and  the  associate  of  men  who  led 
fashion  in  those  days,  it  is  true,  but  then  it  was  very  bad 
fashion ;  then  as  a  lover  of  hangmen,  a  wit,  and  a  lounger. 
There  is  reason  to  believe  that  Selwyn,  though  less  openly 
reprobate  than  many  of  his  associates,  was,  in  his  quiet  way, 
just  as  bad  as  any  of  them,  if  we  except  the  Duke  of  Queens- 
berry,  his  intimate  friend,  or  the  disgusting  "  Franciscans"  of 
Medmenham  Abbey,  of  whom,  though  not  the  founder,  nor 
even  a  member,  he  was,  in  a  manner,  the  suggester  in  his 
blasphemy. 

But  Selwyn's  real  character  is  only  seen  in  profile  in  all 
these  accounts.  He  had  at  the  bottom  of  such  vice,  to  which 
his  position,  and  the  fashion  of  the  day  introduced  him,  a  far 
better  heart  than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  and  in  some  re- 
spects a  kind  of  simplicity  which  was  endearing.  He  was 
neither  knave  nor  fool.  He  was  not  a  voluptuary,  like  his 
friend  the  duke ;  nor  a  continued  drunkard,  like  many  other 
"  fine  gentlemen"  with  whom  he  mixed  ;  nor  a  cheat,  though 
a  gambler ;  nor  a  skeptic,  like  his  friend  Walpole ;  nor  a  blas- 
phemer, like  the  Medmenham  set,  though  he  had  once  paro- 
died profanely  a  sacred  rite ;  nor  was  he  steeped  in  debt,  as 
Fox  was;  nor  does  he  appear  to  have  been  a  practiced  se- 
ducer, as  too  many  of  his  acquaintance  were.  Not  that  these 
negative  qualities  are  to  his  praise;  but  if  we  look  at  the  age 
and  the  society  around  him,  we  must,  at  least,  admit  that  Sel- 
wyn was  not  one  of  the  worst  of  that  wicked  set. 

*But  the  most  pleasing  point  in  the  character  of  the  old 
bachelor — for  he  was  too  much  of  a  wit  ever  to  marry — is  his 
affection  for  children — not  his  own.  That  is,  not  avowedly 
his  own,  for  it  was  often  suspected  that  the  little  ones  he  took 
up  so  fondly  bore  some  relationship  to  him,  and  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  Selwyn,  like  every  body  else  in  that  evil  age, 
had  his  intrigues.  He  did  not  die  in  his  sins,  and  that  is  al- 
most all  we  can  say  for  him.  He  gave  up  gaming  in  time, 
protesting  that  it  was  the  bane  of  four  much  better  things — 
health,  money,  time,  and  thinking.  For  the  last  two,  per- 
haps, he  cared  little.  Before  his  death  he  is  said  to  have  been 
a  Christian,  which  was  a  decided  rarity  in  the  fashionable  set 


MIE-MIE,   THE   LITTLE   ITALIAN.  325 

of  his  day.  Walpole  answered,  when  asked  if  he  was  a  Free- 
mason, that  he  never  had  been  any  thing,  and  probably  most 
of  the  men  of  the  time  would,  if  they  had  had  the  honesty, 
have  said  the  same.  They  were  not  atheists  professedly,  but 
they  neither  beh'eved  in  nor  practiced  Christianity. 

His  love  for  children  has  been  called  one  of  his  eccentrici- 
ties. It  would  be  a  hard  name  to  give  it  if  he  had  not  been  a 
club-lounger  of  his  day.  I  have  sufficient  faith  in  human  na- 
ture to  trust  that  two  thirds  of  the  men  of  this  country  have 
that  most  amiable  eccentricity.  But  in  Selwyn  it  amounted 
to  something  more  than  in  the  ordinary  pater-familias :  it  was 
almost  a  passion.  He  was  almost  motherly  in  his  celibate  ten- 
derness to  the  little  ones  to  whom  he  took  a  fancy.  This  af- 
fection he  showed  to  several  of  the  children,  sons  or  daugh- 
ters, of  his  friends ;  but  to  two  especially,  Anne  Coventry  and 
Maria  Fagniani. 

The  former  was  the  daughter  of  the  beautiful  Maria  Gun- 
ning, who  became  Countess  of  Coventry.  Nanny,  as  he  call- 
ed her,  was  four  years  old  when  her  mother  died,  and  from 
that  time  he  treated  her  almost  as  his  own  child. 

But  Mie-Mie,  as  the  little  Italian  was  called,  was  far  more 
favored.  No  picture  can  better  display  the  vice  of  the  age 
than  that  of  two  men  of  the  highest  fashion,  one  of  them  the 
Duke  of  Queensberry,  the  greatest  libertine  and  most  disgust- 
ing profligate  that  ever  disgraced  the  British  peerage  (which 
is  saying  much),  vying  for  the  honor  of  being  the  father  of  this 
poor  little  girl,  while  a  reverend  doctor  attempted  to  decide 
the  question,  and  advised  one  of  them  actually  to  marry  her ; 
and  her  own  shameless  mother  encouraged  each  in  his  fancy, 
and  alternately  assured  the  one  or  the  other  that  he  was  really 
its  progenitor.  The  doubt  of  the  paternity  may  afford  a  pleas- 
ant subject  of  investigation  to  certain  precisionists  of  our  day, 
but  we  beg  to  decline  entering  on  such  an  inquiry.  Whoever 
may  have  been  the  child's  fe+her,  her  mother  was  a  rather 
beautiful  and  very  immoral  woman,  the  wife  of  the  Marchese 
Fagniani.  She  seems  to  have  desired  to  make  the  most  of 
her  daughter  out  of  the  extraordinary  rivalry  of  the  two  En- 
glish "  gentlemen,"  and  they  were  admirably  taken  in  by  her. 
Whatever  the  truth  may  have  been,  Selwyn's  love  for  chil- 
dren showed  itself  more  strongly  in  this  case  than  in  any  oth- 
er ;  and,  oddly  enough,  it  seems  to  have  begun  when  the  little 
girl  was  at  an  age  when  children  scarcely  interest  other  men 
than  their  fathers — in  short,  in  infancy.  Her  parents  allowed 
him  to  have  the  sole  charge  of  her  at  a  very  early  age,  when 
they  returned  to  the  Continent;  but  in  1777,  the  marchioness, 
being  then  in  Brussels,  claimed  her  daughter  back  again ; 


326      SELWYN'S  LITTLE  COMPANION  TAKEN  FROM  HIM. 

though  less,  it  seems,  from  any  great  anxiety  on  the  child's  ac- 
count, than  because  her  husband's  parents,  in  Milan,  object- 
ed to  their  granddaughter  being  left  in  England ;  and  also, 
not  a  little,  from  fear  of  the  voice  of  Mrs.  Grundy.  Selwyn 
seems  to  have  used  all  kinds  of  arguments  to  retain  the  child ; 
and  a  long  correspondence  took  place,  which  the  marchesa  be- 
gins with  "  My  very  dear  friend,"  and  many  affectionate  ex- 
pressions, and  concludes  with  a  haughty  "  Sir,"  and  her  opin- 
ion that  his  conduct  was  "  devilish."  The  affair  was,  there- 
fore, clearly  a  violent  quarrel,  and  Selwyn  was  obliged  at  last 
to  give  up  the  child.  He  had  a  carriage  fitted  up  for  her  ex- 
pressly for  her  journey ;  made  out  for  her  a  list  of  the  best 
hotels  on  her  route;  sent  his  own  confidential  man-servant 
with  her,  and  treasured  up  among  his  "  relics"  the  childish  lit- 
tle notes,  in  a  large  scrawling  hand,  which  Mie-Mie  sent  him. 
Still  more  curious  was  it  to  see  this  complete  man  of  the  world, 
this  gambler  for  many  years,  this  club-lounger,  drinker,  asso- 
ciate of  well-dressed  blasphemers,  of  Franciscans  of  Medmen- 
ham  Abbey,  of  women  of  morals  as  loose  as  their  petticoats, 
devoting,  not  his  money  only,  but  his  very  time  to  this  mere 
child,  leaving  town  in  the  height  of  the  season  for  dull  Matson, 
that  she  might  have  fresh  air.  Quitting  his  hot  club-rooms, 
his  nights  spent  at  the  piquet-table  and  the  rattle  of  the  dice, 
for  the  quiet,  pleasant  terraces  of  his  country-house,  where  he 
would  hold  the  little  innocent  Mie-Mie  by  her  tiny  hand,  as 
she  looked  up  into  his  shriveled  dissipated  face  ;  quitting  the 
interchange  of  wit,  the  society  of  the  Townshends,  the  Wai- 
poles,  the  Williamses,  the  Edgecumbes ;  all  the  jovial,  keen  wis- 
dom of  Gilly,  and  Dick,  and  Horace,  and  Charles,  as  they  call- 
ed one  another,  for  the  meaningless  prattle,  the  merry  laugh- 
ter of  this  half-English,  half-Italian  child.  It  redeems  Selwyn 
in  our  eyes,  and  it  may  have  done  him  real  good :  nay,  he  must 
have  felt  a  keen  refreshment  in  this  change  from  vice  to  inno- 
cence ;  and  we  understand  the  misery  he  expressed,  when  the 
old  bachelor's  one  little  companion  and  only  pure  friend  was 
taken  away  from  him.  His  love  for  the  child  was  well  known 
in  London  society ;  and  of  it  did  Sheridan's  friends  take  ad- 
vantage, when  they  wanted  to  get  Selwyn  out  of  Brookes's, 
to  prevent  his  black-balling  the  dramatist.  The  anecdote  is 
given  in  the  next  Memoir. 

In  his  later  days  Selwyn  still  haunted  the  clubs,  hanging 
about,  sleepy,  shriveled,  dilapidated  in  face  and  figure,  yet 
still  respected  and  dreaded  by  the  youngsters,  as  the  "  cele- 
brated Mr.  Selwyn."  The  wit's  disease — gout — carried  him 
off  at  last,  in  1791,  at  the  age  of  seventy-two. 

He  left  a  fortune  which  was  not  contemptible  :  £33,000  of 


HIS   LATER   DAYS   AND   DEATH.  327 

it  were  to  go  to  Mie-Mie — by  this  time  a  young  lady — and  as 
her  "other  papa,"  at  his  death,  left  her  no  less  than  £150,000, 
Miss  was  by  no  means  a  bad  match  for  Lord  Yarmouth,*  who 
was  too  little  apprehensive  on  points  of  "  legitimacy"  to  look 
closely  into  the  doubt  between  Selwyn,  Queensberry,  and  the 
inarchese.  See  what  a  good  thing  it  is  to  have  three  papas, 
when  two  of  them  are  rich !  The  duke  made  Lord  Yarmouth 
his  residuary  legatee,  and  between  him  and  his  wife  divided 
nearly  half  a  million. 

People  who  pass  by  a  certain  house  in  Regent's  Park  have 
generally  some  scandalous  tale  to  tell  you  of  "  the  late  mar- 
quis." The  story  of  the  marchioness's  three  papas  is  quite 
scandalous  enough  to  make  us  think  we  have  said  enough,  and 
had.  better  close  this  sketch  of  George  Selwyn — only  remem- 
bering that,  wit,  gambler,  drinker,  profaner,  club-lounger,  gal- 
lows-lover, and  worse,  though  he  was,  he  had  yet  two  points 
to  redeem  him  from  utter  condemnation — a  good  heart  and  a 
fondness  for  children. 

*  Afterward  the  well-known  and  dissolute  Marquis  of  Hertford. 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY   SHERIDAN, 

POOE  Sherry !  poor  Sherry !  drunkard,  gambler,  spendthrift, 
debtor,  godless  and  worldly  as  thou  wert,  what  is  it  that  shakes 
from  our  hand  the  stone  we  would  fling  at  thee  ?  Almost,  we 
must  confess  it,  thy  very  faults ;  at  least  those  qualities  which 
seem  to  have  been  thy  glory  and  thy  ruin ;  which  brought 
thee  into  temptation ;  to  which,  hadst  thou  been  less  brilliant, 
less  bountiful,  thou  hadst  never  been  drawn.  What  is  it  that 
disarms  us  when  we  review  thy  life,  and  wrings  from  us  a  tear 
when  we  should  utter  a  reproach?  Thy  punishment;  that 
bitter,  miserable  end ;  that  long  battling  with  poverty,  debt, 
disease,  all  brought  on  by  thyself;  that  abandonment  in  the 
hour  of  need,  more  bitter  than  them  all ;  that  awakening  to 
the  terrible  truth  of  the  hollowness  of  man  and  rottenness  of 
the  world !  surely  this  is  enough :  surely  we  may  hope  that  a 
pardon  followed.  But  now  let  us  view  thee  in  thy  upward 
flight — the  genius,  the  wit,  the  monarch  of  mind. 

This  great  man,  this  wonderful  genius,  this  eloquent  senator, 
this  most  applauded  dramatist  was — hear  it,  oh,  ye  boys !  and 
fling  it  triumphantly  in  the  faces  of  your  pedagogues — Sheridan, 
at  your  age,  was  a  dunce !  This  was  the  more  extraordinary, 
inasmuch  as  his  father,  mother,  and  grandfather  were  all  cele- 
brated for  their  quick  mental  powers.  The  last,  in  fact,  Dr. 
Sheridan,  was  a  successful  and  eminent  schoolmaster,  the  inti- 
mate friend  of  Dean  Swift,  and  an  author.  He  was  an  Irish- 
man and  a  wit,  and  would  seem  to  have  been  a  Jacobite  to 
boot,  for  he  was  deprived  of  a  chaplaincy  he  held  under  Gov- 
ernment, for  preaching,  on  King  George's  birthday,  a  sermon 
having  for  its  text  "  Sufficient  for  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof." 

Sheridan's  mother,  again — an  eccentric,  extraordinary  wom- 
an— wrote  novels  and  plays ;  among  the  latter  "  The  Discov- 
ery," which  Garrick  said  was  "  one  of  the  best  comedies  he 
ever  read ;"  and  Sheridan's  father,  Tom  Sheridan,  was  famous, 
in  connection  with  the  stage,  where  he  was  so  long  the  rival 
of  David  Garrick. 

Born  of  such  parents,  in  September,  1*751,  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan  was  sent  in  due  course  to  Harrow,  where  that  famous 
old  pedant,  Dr.  Parr,  was  at  that  time  one  of  the  masters.  The 
Doctor  has  himself  described  the  lazy  boy,  in  whose  face  he 
discovered  the  latent  genius,  and  whom  he  attempted  to  in- 


330  BOYISH   DREAMS   OP  LITEBAEY   FAME. 

spire  with  a  love  of  Greek  verbs  and  Latin  verses,  by  making 
him  ashamed  of  his  ignorance.  But  Richard  preferred  English 
verses  and  no  verbs,  and  the  Doctor  failed.  He  did  not,  even 
at  that  period,  cultivate  elocution,  of  which  his  father  was  so 
good  a  master ;  though  Dr.  Parr  remembered  one  of  his  sis- 
ters, on  a  visit  to  Harrow,  reciting,  in  accordance  with  her 
father's  teaching,  the  well-known  lines : 
"None  but  the  brave, 

None  but  the  brave, 

None  but  the  brave  deserve  the  fair." 

But  the  real  mind  of  the  boy  who  wouldn't  be  a  scholar  show- 
ed itself  early  enough.  He  had  only  just  left  Harrow,  when 
he  began  to  display  his  literary  abilities.  He  had  formed  at 
school  the  intimate  acquaintance  of  Halhed,  afterward  a  distin- 
guished Indianist,  a  man  of  like  tastes  with  himself;  he  had 
translated  with  him  some  of  the  poems  of  Theocritus.  The 
two  boys  had  reveled  together  in  boyish  dreams  of  literary 
fame — ah,  those  boyish  dreams !  so  often  our  noblest — so  sel- 
dom realized.  So  often,  alas  !  the  aspirations  to  which  we  can 
look  back  as  our  purest  and  best,  and  which  make  us  bitterly 
regret  that  they  were  but  dreams.  And  now,  when  young 
Halhed  went  to  Oxford,  and  young  Sheridan  to  join  his  family 
at  Bath,  they  continued  these  ambitious  projects  for  a  time, 
and  laid  out  their  fancy  at  full  usury  over  many  a  work  des- 
tined never  to  see  the  fingers  of  the  printer's  devil.  Among 
these  was  a  farce,  or  rather  burlesque,  which  shows  immense 
promise,  and  which,  oddly  enough,  resembles  in  its  cast  the 
famous  "  Critic,"  which  followed  it  later.  It  was  called  "  Ju- 
piter," and  turned  chiefly  on  the  story  of  Ixion — 

"  Embracing  cloud,  Ixion  like," 

the  lover  of  Juno,  who  caught  a  cold  instead  of  the  Queen  of 
Heaven ;  and  who,  according  to  the  classical  legend,  tortured 
forever  on  a  wheel,  was  in  this  production  to  be  condemned 
forever  to  trundle  the  machine  of  a  "  needy  knife-grinder," 
amid  a  grand  musical  chorus  of  "  razors,  scissors,  and  pen- 
knives to  grind !"  This  piece  was  amusing  enough,  and  clever 
enough,  though  it  betrayed  repeatedly  the  youthfulness  of  its 
authors ;  but  less  so  their  next  attempt,  a  weekly  periodical,  to 
be  called  "  Hernan's  Miscellany,"  of  which  Sheridan  wrote,  or 
was  to  write,  pretty  nearly  the  whole.  None  but  the  first 
number  was  ever  completed,  and  perhaps  we  need  not  regret 
that  no  more  followed  it ;  but  it  is  touching  to  see  these  two 
young  men,  both  feeling  their  powers,  confident  in  them,  and 
sunning  their  halcyon's  wings  in  the  happy  belief  that  they 
were  those  of  the  eagle,  longing  eagerly,  earnestly,  for  the  few 
poor  guineas  that  they  hoped  from  their  work.  Halhed,  in- 


SHERIDAN   IN   LOVE.  331 

deed,  wrote  diligently,  but  his  colleague  was  not  true  to  the 
contract,  and  though  the  hope  of  gold  stimulated  him — for  he 
was  poor  enough — from  time  to  time  to  a  great  effort,  he  was 
always  "  beginning,"  and  never  completing. 

The  only  real  product  of  these  united  labors  was  a  volume 
of  Epistles  in  verse  from  the  Greek  of  a  poor  writer  of  late 
age,  Aristsenetus.  This  volume,  which  does  little  credit  to 
either  of  its  parents,  was  positively  printed  and  published  in 
17  70,  but  the  rich  harvest  of  fame  and  shillings  which  they  ex- 
pected from  it  was  never  gathered  in.  Yet  the  book  excited 
some  little  notice.  The  incognito  of  its  authors  induced  some 
critics  to  palm  it  even  on  such  a  man  as  Dr.  Johnson :  others 
praised;  others  sneered  at  it.  In  the  young  men  it  raised 
hopes,  only  to  dash  them ;  but  its  failure  was  not  so  utter  as 
to  put  the  idea  of  literary  success  entirely  out  of  their  heads, 
nor  its  success  sufficient  to  induce  them  to  rush  recklessly  into 
print,  and  thus  strangle  their  fame  in  its  cradle.  Let  it  fail, 
was  Richard  Sheridan's  thought ;  he  had  now  a  far  more  en- 
grossing ambition.  In  a  word,  he  was  in  love. 

'Nonsense !  Sherry  in  love,  the  idea  is  preposterous.  Sher- 
ry, the  disreputable,  the  licentious,  the  "  Bardolph,"  as  he  was 
afterward  called,  still  more  the  Genius — was  Genius  ever  in 
love  ?  Yes,  he  was  in  love  for  a  time — only  for  a  time,  and 
not  truly.  But,  be  it  remembered,  Sheridan's  evil  days  had 
not  commenced.  He  sowed  his  wild  oats  late  in  life — alack 
for  him !  and  he  never  finished  sowing  them.  His  was  not  the 
viciousness  of  nature,  but  the  corruption  of  success.  "  In  all 
time  of  wealth,  good  Lord  deliver  us !"  What  prayer  can 
wild,  unrestrained,  unheeding  Genius  utter  with  more  ferven- 
cy ?  I  own  Genius  is  rarely  in  love.  There  is  an  egotism, 
almost  a  selfishness,  about  it,  that  will  not  stoop  to  such  com- 
mon worship*  Women  know  it,  and  often  prefer  the  blunt, 
honest,  commonplace  soldier  to  the  wild  erratic  poet.  Gen- 
ius, grand  as  it  is,  is  unsympathetic.  It  demands  higher — 
the  highest  joys.  It  will  not  smack  its  lips  over  a  beefsteak. 
Its  banquet  may  be  the  richest,  just  to  be  tasted ;  or  the  poor- 
est, just  to  try  hunger.  Genius  claims  to  be  loved,  but  to  love 
is  too  much  to  ask  it.  In  very  sooth,  it  is  not  more  nor  less 
than  madness;  and  who  ever  saw  a  madman  in  love?  Who 
ever  knew  a  madman  cherish  even  the  commonest  passion? 
No,  Genius  is  a  disease,  the  mind  overpowering  the  body.  It 
is  incapable  of  the  honesty,  despises  the  honor,  of  a  pure  love 
affair.  And  yet  at  this  time  Sheridan  was  not  a  matured  Gen- 
ius. When  his  development  came,  he  cast  off  this  very  love 
for  which  he  had  fought,  mano3uvred,  and  struggled,  and  was 
unfaithful  to  the  very  wife  whom  he  had  nearly  died  to  obtain. 


332  A   NEST   OF   NIGHTINGALES. 

Miss  Linley  was  one  of  a  family  who  have  been  called  "  a 
nest  of  nightingales."  Young  ladies  who  practice  elaborate 
pieces  and  sing  simple  ballads  in  the  voice  of  a  white  mouse, 
know  the  name  of  Linley  well.  For  ages  the  Linleys  have 
been  the  bards  of  England — composers,  musicians,  singers,  al- 
ways popular,  always  English.  Sheridan's  love  was  one  of 
the  most  renowned  of  the  family,  but  the  "  Maid  of  Bath,"  as 
she  was  called,  was  as  celebrated  for  her  beauty  as  for  the 
magnificence  of  her  voice.  When  Sheridan  first  knew  her, 
she  was  only  sixteen  years  old — very  beautiful,  clever,  and 
modest,  and — a  flirt  of  the  first  water.  She  was  a  singer  by 
profession,  living  at  Bath,  as  Sheridan,  only  three  years  older 
than  herself,  also  was,  but  attending  concerts,  oratorios,  and 
so  forth,  in  other  places,  especially  at  Oxford.  Her  adorers 
were  legion ;  and  the  Oxford  boys  especially — always  in  love 
as  they  are — were  among  them.  Halhed  was  among  these 
last,  and  in  the  innocence  of  his  heart  confided  his  passion  to 
his  friend  Dick  Sheridan.  At  sixteen  the  young  beauty  be- 
gan her  conquests.  A  rich  old  Wiltshire  squire,  with  a  fine 
heart,  as  golden  as  his  guineas,  offered  to  or  for  her,  and  was 
readily  accepted.  But  "Cecilia,"  as  she  was  always  called, 
could  not  sacrifice  herself  on  the  altar  of  duty,  and  she  pri- 
vately told  him,  that  though  she  honored  and  esteemed,  she 
could  never  love  him.  The  old  gentleman  proved  his  worth. 
Did  he  storm?  did  he  hold  her  to  her  engagement?  did  he 
shackle  himself  with  a  young  wife,  who  would  only  learn  to 
hate  him  for  his  pertinacity  ?  Not  a  bit  of  it.  He  acted  with 
a  generosity  which  should  be  held  up  as  a  model  to  all  old 
gentlemen  who  are  wild  enough  to  fall  in  love  with  girls  of 
sixteen.  He  knew  Mr.  Linley,  who  was  delighted  with  the 
match,  would  be  furious  if  it  were  broken  off.  He  offered  to 
take  on  himself  all  the  blame  of  the  breach,  and,  to  satisfy  the 
angry  parent,  settled  £1000  on  the  daughter.  The  offer  was 
accepted,  and  the  trial  for  breach  of  promise  with  which  the 
pere  Linley  had  threatened  Mr.  Long,  was  of  course  withheld. 
Mr.  Long  afterward  presented  Mrs.  Sheridan  with  £3000. 

The  "  Maid  of  Bath"  was  now  an  heiress  as  well  as  a  fasci- 
nating beauty,  but  her  face  and  her  voice  were  the  chief  en- 
chantments with  her  ardent  and  youthful  adorers.  The  Sher- 
idans  had  settled  in  Mead  Street,  in  that  town  which  is  cele- 
brated for  its  gambling,  its  scandal,  and  its  unhealthy  situation 
at  the  bottom  of  a  natural  basin.  Well  might  the  swine  of  the 
Celtic  shepherd  discover  its  mineral  waters ;  it  has  been  a  ver- 
itable sty  of  vice  and  dirt  since  then.  Well  might  the  Romans 
build  their  baths  there :  it  will  take  more  water  than  even  Bath 
supplies  to  wash  out  its  follies  and  iniquities.  It  certainly  is 


CAPTIVATED   BY   GENIUS.  333 

strange  how  washing  and  cards  go  together.  One  would  fan- 
cy there  were  no  baths  in  Eden,  for  wherever  there  are  baths, 
there  we  find  idleness  and  all  its  attendant  vices. 

The  Linleys  were  soon  intimate  with  the  Sheridans,  and  the 
Maid  of  Bath  added  to  her  adorers  both  Richard  and  his  elder 
brother  Charles ;  only,  just  as  at  Harrow  every  one  thought 
Richard  a  dunce,  and  he  disappointed  them ;  so  at  Bath  no 
one  thought  Richard  would  fall  in  love,  and  he  did  disappoint 
them — none  more  so  than  Charles,  his  brother,  and  Halhed, 
his  bosom  friend.  As  for  the  latter,  he  was  almost  mad  in  his 
devotion,  and  certainly  extravagant  in  his  expressions.  He  de- 
scribed his  passion  by  a  clever,  but  rather  disagreeable  simile, 
which  Sheridan,  who  was  a  most  disgraceful  plagiarist,  though 
he  had  no  need  to  be  so,  afterward  adopted  as  his  own.  "Just 
as  the  Egyptian  pharmacists,"  wrote  Halhed,  in  a  Latin  letter, 
in  which  he  described  the  power  of  Miss  Linley's  voice  over 
his  spirit,  "  were  wont,  in  embalming  a  dead  body,  to  draw  the 
brain  out  through  the  ears  with  a  crooked  hook,  this  nightin- 
gale has  drawn  out  through  mine  ears  not  my  brain  only,  but 
my  heart  also." 

Then  among  other  of  her  devotees  were  Norris,  the  singer, 
and  Mr.  Watts,  a  rich  gentleman-commoner,  who  had  also  met 
her  at  Oxford.  Surely  with  such  and  other  rivals,  the  chances 
of  the  quiet,  unpretending,  undemonstrative  boy  of  nineteen 
were  small.  But  no,  Miss  Linley  was  foolish  enough  to  be 
captivated  by  genius,  and  charmed  by  such  poems  as  the  quiet 
boy  wrote  to  her,  of  which  this  is,  perhaps,  one  of  the  prettiest : 

"Dry  that  tear,  my  gentlest  love ; 

Be  hush'd  that  struggling  sigh, 
Nor  seasons,  day,  nor  fate  shall  prove 

More  fix'd,  more  true  than  I. 
Hush'd  be  that  sigh,  be  dry  that  tear ; 
Cease  boding  doubt,  cease  anxious  fear — 
Dry  be  that  tear. 

"  Ask'st  thou  how  long  my  love  will  stay, 

When  all  that's  new  is  past  ? 
How  long,  ah  Delia,  can  I  say 
How  long  my  life  will  last  ? 
Dry  be  that  tear,  be  hush'd  that  sigh, 
At  least  I'll  love  thee  till  I  die : 
Hush'd  be  that  sigh. 

"And  does  that  thought  affect  thee  too, 

The  thought  of  Sylvio's  death, 
That  he  who  only  breath'd  for  you, 

Must  yield  that  faithful  breath  ? 
Hush'd  be  that  sigh,  be  dry  that  tear, 
Nor  let  us  lose  our  heaven  here : 
Be  dry  that  tear." 


834  SHEKIDAN'S   ELOPEMENT   WITH    "CECILIA." 

The  many  adorers  had  not  the  remotest  suspicion  of  this 
devotion,  and  "  gave  her"  to  this,  that,  or  the  other  eligible 
personage ;  but  the  villainous  conduct  of  a  scoundrel  soon 
brought  the  matter  to  a  crisis.  The  whole  story  was  as  ro- 
mantic as  it  could  be.  In  a  three-volume  novel,  critics,  always 
so  just  and  acute  in  their  judgment,  would  call  it  far-fetched, 
improbable,  unnatural ;  in  short,  any  thing  but  what  should  be 
the  plot  of  the  pure  "  domestic  English  story."  Yet,  here  it 
is  with  almost  dramatic  effect,  the  simple  tale  of  what  really 
befell  one  of  our  most  celebrated  men. 

Yes,  to  complete  the  fiction-like  aspect  of  the  affair,  there 
was  even  a  "  captain"  in  the  matter — as  good  a  villain  as  ever 
shone  in  short  hose  and  cut  doublet  at  the  "  Strand"  or  "  Vic- 
toria." Captain  Matthews  was  a  married  man,  and  a  very 
naughty  one.  He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  the  Linleys,  and 
wanted  to  push  his  intimacy  too  far.  In  short,  "  not  to  put 
too  fine  a  point  on  it"  (too  fine  a  point  is  precisely  what  never 
is  put),  he  attempted  to  seduce  the  pretty,  innocent  girl,  and 
not  dismayed  at  one  failure,  went  on  again  and  again.  "  Ce- 
cilia," knowing  the  temper  of  Linley  pere,  was  afraid  to  expose 
him  to  her  father,  and  with  a  course,  which  we  of  the  present 
day  can  not  but  think  strange,  if  nothing  more,  disclosed  the 
attempts  of  her  persecutor  to  no  other  than  her  own  lover, 
Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan. 

Strange  want  of  delicacy,  undoubtedly,  and  yet  we  can  ex- 
cuse the  poor  songstress,  with  a  father  who  sought  only  to 
make  money  out  of  her  talents,  and  no  other  relations  to  con- 
fide in.  But  Richard  Brinsley,  long  her  lover,  now  resolved 
to  be  both  her  protector  and  her  husband.  He  persuaded  her 
to  fly  to  France,  under  cover  of  entering  a  convent.  He  in- 
duced his  sister  to  lend  him  money  out  of  that  provided  for 
the  housekeeping  at  home,  hired  a  post-chaise,  and  sent  a 
sedan-chair  to  her  father's  house  in  the  Crescent  to  convey 
her  to  it,  and  wafted  her  off  to  town.  Thence,  after  a  few 
adroit  lies  on  the  part  of  Sheridan,  they  sailed  to  Dunkirk ; 
and  there  he  persuaded  her  to  become  his  wife.  She  consent- 
ed, and  they  were  knotted  together  by  an  obliging  priest  ac- 
customed to  these  runaway  matches  from  la  perfide  Albion. 

The  irate  parent,  Linley,  followed,  recaptured  his  daughter, 
and  brought  her  back  to  England.  Meanwhile,  the  elopement 
excited  great  agitation  in  the  good  city  of  Bath,  and  among 
others,  the  villain  of  the  story,  the  gallant  Captain  Matthews, 
posted  Richard  Brinsley  as  "  a  scoundrel  and  a  liar,"  the  then 
polite  method  of  expressing  disgust.  Home  came  Richard  in 
the  wake  of  Miss  Linley,  who  rejoiced  in  the  unromantic  prse- 
nomen  of  "  Betsy,"  and  her  angry  parent,  and  found  matters 


HIS   DUEL   WITH   CAPTAIN   MATTHEWS.  335 

had  been  running  high  in  his  short  absence.  A  duel  with 
Matthews  seems  to  have  been  the  natural  consequence,  and  up 
Richard  posted  to  London  to  fight  it.  Matthews  played  the 
craven — Sheridan  the  impetuous  lover.  They  met,  fought, 
seized  one  another's  swords,  wrestled,  fell  together,  and  wound- 
ed each  other  with  the  stumps  of  their  rapiers  in  true  Chevy- 
Chase  fashion.  Matthews,  who  had  behaved  in  a  cowardly 
manner  in  the  first  affair,  sought  to  retrieve  his  honor  by  send- 
ing a  second  challenge.  Again  the  rivals — well  represented  in 
"  The  Rivals"  afterward  produced — met  at  Kingsdown.  Mr. 
Matthews  drew ;  Mr.  Sheridan  advanced  on  him  at  first ;  Mr. 
Matthews  in  turn  advanced  fast  on  Mr.  Sheridan ;  upon  which 
he  retreated,  till  he  very  suddenly  ran  in  upon  Mr.  Matthews, 
laying  himself  exceedingly  open,  and  endeavoring  to  get  hold 
of  Mr.  Matthews'  sword.  Mr.  Matthews  received  him  at  point, 
and,  I  believe,  disengaged  his  sword  from  Mr.  Sheridan's  body, 
and  gave  him  another  wound.  The  same  scene  was  now  enact- 
ed, and  a  combat ^a  Voutrance  took  place,  ending  in  mutual 
wounds,  and  fortunately  no  one  dead. 

Poor  little  Betsy  was  at  Oxford  when  all  this  took  place. 
On  her  return  to  Bath  she  heard  something  of  it,  and  uncon- 
sciously revealed  the  secret  of  her  private  marriage,  claiming 
the  right  of  a  wife  to  watch  over  her  wounded  husband.  Then 
came  the  denouement.  Old  Tom  Sheridan  rejected  his  son. 
The  angry  Linley  would  have  rejected  his  daughter,  but  for 
her  honor.  Richard  was  sent  off  into  Essex,  and  in  due  time 
the  couple  were  legally  married  in  England.  So  ended  a  wild, 
romantic  affair,  in  which  Sheridan  took  a  desperate,  but  not 
altogether  honorable,  part.  But  the  dramatist  got  more  out 
of  it  than  a  pretty  wife.  Like  all  true  geniuses,  he  employed 
his  own  experience  in  the  production  of  his  works,  and  drew 
from  the  very  event  of  his  life  some  hints  or  touches  to  enliven 
the  characters  of  his  imagination.  Surely  the  bravado  and 
cowardice  of  Captain  Matthews,  who  on  the  first  meeting  in 
the  Park  is  described  as  finding  all  kinds  of  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  their  fighting,  objecting  now  to  the  ground  as  unlevel, 
now  to  the  presence  of  a  stranger,  who  turns  out  to  be  an  offi- 
cer, and  very  politely  moves  off  when  requested,  who,  in  short, 
delays  the  event  as  long  as  possible,  must  have  supplied  the 
idea  of  Bob  Acres ;  while  the  very  conversations,  of  which  we 
have  no  record,  may  have  given  him  some  of  those  hints  of 
character  which  made  "  The  Rivals"  so  successful.  That  play 
— his  first — was  written  in  1774.  It  failed  on  its  first  appear- 
ance, owing  to  the  bad  acting  of  the  part  of  Sir  Lucius  O'Trig- 
ger,  by  Mr.  Lee ;  but  when  another  actor  was  substituted,  the 
piece  was  at  once  successful,  and  acted  with  overflowing 


336  PAINFUL  FAMILY   ESTRANGEMENTS. 

houses  all  over  the  country.  How  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  It 
may  have  been  exaggerated,  far-fetched,  unnatural,  but  such 
characters  as  Sir  Anthony  Absolute,  Sir  Lucius,  Bob  Acres, 
Lydia  Languish,  and  most  of  all  Mrs.  Malaprop,  so  admirably 
conceived,  and  so  carefully  and  ingeniously  worked  out,  could 
not  but  be  admired.  They  have  become  household  words ; 
they  are  even  now  our  standards  of  ridicule,  and  be  they  nat- 
ural or  not,  these  last  eighty  years  have  changed  the  world  so 
little  that  Malaprops  and  Acreses  may  be  found  in  the  range 
of  almost  any  man's  experience,  and  in  every  class  of  society. 

Sheridan  and  his  divine  Betsy  were  now  living  in  their  own 
house,  in  that  dull  little  place,  Orchard  Street,  Portman  Square, 
then  an  aristocratic  neighborhood,  and  he  was  diligent  in  the 
production  of  essays,  pamphlets,  and  farces,  many  of  which 
never  saw  the  light,  while  others  fell  flat,  or  were  not  calcula- 
ted to  bring  him  any  fame.  What  great  authors  have  not  ex- 
perienced the  same  disappointments  ?  What  men  would  ever 
be  great  if  they  allowed  such  checks  to  damp  their  energy,  or 
were  turned  back  by  them  from  the  course  in  which  they  feel 
that  their  power  lies  ? 

But  his  next  work,  the  opera  of  "  The  Duenna,"  had  a  yet 
more  signal  success,  and  a  run  of  no  less  than  seventy-five 
nights  at  Covent  Garden,  which  put  Garrick  at  Drury  Lane 
to  his  wit's  end  to  know  how  to  compete  with  it.  Old  Linley 
himself  composed  the  music  for  it ;  and  to  show  how  thus  a 
family  could  hold  the  stage,  Garrick  actually  played  off  the 
mother  against  the  son,  and  revived  Mrs.  Sheridan's  comedy 
of  "The  Discovery,"  to  compete  with  Richard  Sheridan's 
"Duenna." 

The  first  night  "The  Rivals"  was  brought  out  at  Bath  came 
Sheridan's  father,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  had  refused  to  have 
any  thing  to  say  to  his  son.  It  is  related,  as  an  instance  of 
Richard's  filial  affection,  that  during  the  representation  he 
placed  himself  behind  a  side  scene  opposite  to  the  box  in 
which  his  father  and  sisters  sat,  and  gazed  at  them  all  the 
time.  When  he  returned  to  his  house  and  wife,  he  burst  into 
tears,  and  declared  that  he  felt  it  too  bitter  that  he  alone 
should  have  been  forbidden  to  speak  to  those  on  whom  he  had 
been  gazing  all  the  night. 

In  the  following  year  this  man  of  straw,  who  married  on 
nothing  but  his  brain,  and  had  no  capital,  no  wealthy  friends, 
in  short  nothing  whatever,  suddenly  appears  hi  the  most  mys- 
terious manner  as  a  capitalist,  and  lays  down  his  £10,000  in 
the  coolest  and  quietest  manner.  And  for  what  ?  For  a  share 
in  the  purchase  of  Garrick's  moiety  of  the  patent  of  Drury 
Lane.  The  whole  property  was  worth  £70,000 ;  Garrick  sold 


ENTERS  DRURY  LANE.  837 

his  half  for  £35,000,  of  which  old  Mr.  Linley  contributed 
£10,000,  Doctor  Ford  £15,000,  and  penniless  Sheridan  the  bal- 
ance. Where  he  got  the  money  nobody  knew,  and  apparently 
nobody  asked.  It  was  paid,  and  he  entered  at  once  on  the 
business  of  proprietor  of  that  old  house,  where  so  many  a 
Roscius  has  strutted  and  declaimed  with  more  or  less  fame ; 
so  many  a  walking  gentleman  done  his  five  shillings'  worth  of 
polite  comedy,  so  many  a  tinsel  king  degraded  the  "  legitimate 
drama"  in  the  most  illegitimate  manner,  and  whose  glories 
were  extinguished  with  the  reign  of  Macready,  when  we  were 
boys,  nous  autres.  • 

The  first  piece  he  contributed  to  this  stage  was  "A  Trip  to 
Scarborough,"  which  was  only  a  species  of  "  family  edition" 
of  Vanbrugh's  obscene  play,  "The  Relapse;"  but  in  1777  he 
reached  the  acme  of  his  fame,  in  "  The  School  for  Scandal." 

But  alack  and  alas  for  these  sensual  days,  when  it  is  too 
much  trouble  to  think,  and  people  go  to  the  play,  if  they  go 
at  all,  to  feast  their  eyes  and  ears,  not  their  minds,  to  gaze, 
like  clods,  on  a  tinsel  pageant  of  Mr.  Charles  Kean's,  or,  like 
a  dull  eastern  prince,  on  the  meretricious  attitudes  of  half- 
clothed  ballet-girls ;  nay,  worse,  to  listen  to  the  noise  and  clat- 
ter of  Verdi  or  Balfe,  and  impudently  call  it  music ;  to  songs 
in  a  language  they  can  not  understand ;  and  ridiculous  rant- 
ing, to  which  they  are  not  ashamed  to  give  the  name  of  acting. 
Can  any  sensible  person  believe  that  if  "  The  School  for  Scan- 
dal," teeming  as  it  does  with  wit,  satire,  and  character,  finer 
and  truer  than  in  any  play  produced  since  the  days  of  Ben 
Jonson,  Massinger,  and  Marlowe,  were  set  on  the  boards  of 
the  Haymarket  at  this  day,  as  a  new  piece  by  an  author  of  no 
very  high  celebrity,  it  would  draw  away  a  single  admirer  from 
the  flummery  in  Oxford  Street,  the  squeaking  at  Covent  Gar- 
den, or  the  broad,  exaggerated  farce  at  the  Adelphi  or  Olym- 
pic ?  No :  it  may  still  have  its  place  on  the  London  stage 
when  well  acted,  but  it  owes  that  to  its  ancient  celebrity,  and 
it  can  never  compete  with  the  tinsel  and  tailoring  which  alone 
can  make  even  Shakspeare  go  down  with  a  modern  audience. 

In  those  days  of  Garrick,  on  the  other  hand,  those  glorious 
days  of  true  histrionic  art,  high  and  low  were  not  ashamed  to 
throng  Drury  Lane  and  Covent  Garden,  and  make  the  appear- 
ance of  a  new  play  the  great  event  of  the  season.  Hundreds 
were  turned  away  from  the  doors,  when  the  "  School  for  Scan- 
dal" was  acted,  and  those  who  were  fortunate  enough  to  get 
in  made  the  piece  the  subject  of  conversation  in  society  for 
many  a  night,  passing  keen  comment  on  every  scene,  every 
line,  every  word  almost,  and  using  their  minds  as  we  now  use 
our  eyes. 

P 


338  OPINIONS    OP   SHEBIDAN   AND   HIS   INFLUENCE. 

This  brilliant  play,  the  earliest  idea  of  which  was  derived 
from  its  author's  experience  of  the  gossip  of  that  kettle  of  scan- 
dal and  backbiting,  Bath,  where  if  no  other  commandment 
were  ever  broken,  the  constant  breach  of  the  ninth  would  suf- 
fice to  put  it  on  a  level  with  certain  condemned  cities  we  have 
somewhere  read  of,  won  for  Sheridan  a  reputation  of  which  he 
at  once  felt  the  value,  and  made  his  purchase  of  a  share  in  the 
property  of  Old  Drury  for  the  time  being  a  successful  specula- 
tion. It  produced  a  result  which  his  good  heart  perhaps 
valued  even  more  than  the  guineas  which  now  flowed  in ;  it 
induced  his  father,  who  had  long  been  at  war  with  him,  to 
seek  a  reconciliation,  and  the  elder  Sheridan  actually  became 
manager  of  the  theatre  of  which  his  son  was  part  proprietor. 

Old  Tom  Sheridan  had  always  been  a  proud  man,  and  when 
once  he  was  offended,  was  hard  to  bring  round  again.  His 
quarrel  with  Johnson  was  an  instance  of  this.  In  1762  the 
Doctor  hearing  they  had  given  Sheridan  a  pension  of  two  hund- 
red a  year,  exclaimed,  "  What,  have  they  given  him,  a  pen- 
sion ?  then  it  is  time  for  me  to  give  up  mine."  A  "kind  friend" 
took  care  to  repeat  the  peevish  exclamation,  without  adding 
what  Johnson  had  said  immediately  afterward,  "However,  I 
am  glad  that  they  have  given  Mr.  Sheridan  a  pension,  for  he 
is  a  very  good  man."  The  actor  was  disgusted ;  and  though 
Boswell  interfered,  declined  to  be  reconciled.  On  one  occa- 
sion he  even  rushed  from  a  house  at  which  he  was  to  dine, 
when  he  heard  that  the  great  Samuel  had  been  invited.  The 
Doctor  had  little  opinion  of  Sheridan's  declamation.  "Be- 
sides, sir,"  said  he,  "what  influence  can  Mr. Sheridan  have  upon 
the  language  of  this  great  country  by  his  narrow  exertions  ? 
Sir,  it  is  burning  a  farthing  candle  at  Dover  to  show  light  at 
Calais."  Still,  when  Garrick  attacked  his  rival,  Johnson  nobly 
defended  him.  "No,  sir,"  he  said,  "there  is  to  be  sure,  in 
Sheridan,  something  to  reprehend,  and  every  thing  to  laugh 
at ;  but,  sir,  he  is  not  a  bad  man.  No,  sir ;  were  mankind  to 
be  divided  into  good  and  bad,  he  would  stand  considerably 
within  the  ranks  of  the  good." 

However,  the  greatest  bully  of  his  age  (and  the  kindest- 
hearted  man)  thought  very  differently  of  the  son.  Richard 
Brinsley  had  written  a  prologue  to  Savage's  play  of  "Sir 
Thomas  Overbury" — 

"  Ill-fated  Savage,  at  whose  birth  was  giv'n 
No  parent  but  the  muse,  no  friend  but  Heav'n ;" 

and  in  this  had  paid  an  elegant  compliment  to  the  great  lexi- 
cographer, winding  up  with  these  lines : 

"So  pleads  the  tale  that  gives  to  future  times 
The  son's  misfortunes  and  the  parent's  crimes ; 


THE   LITERARY   CLUB.  341 

There  shall  his  fame,  if  own'd  to-night,  survive, 
Fix'd  by  the  hand  that  bids  our  language  live — " 

referring  at  once  to  Johnson's  life  of  his  friend  Savage  and  to 
his  great  Dictionary.  It  was  Savage,  you  remember,  with 
whom  Johnson  in  his  days  of  starvation  was  wont  to  walk  the 
streets  all  night,  neither  of  them  being  able  to  pay  for  a  lodg- 
ing, and  with  whom,  walking  one  night  round  and  round  St. 
James's  Square,  he  kept  up  his  own  and  his  companion's  spirits 
by  inveighing  against  the  minister,  and  declaring  that  they 
would  "  stand  by  their  country." 

Doubtless  the  Doctor  felt  as  much  pleasure  at  the  meed 
awarded  to  his  old  companion  in  misery  as  at  the  high  com- 
pliment to  himself.  Anyhow  he  pronounced  that  Sheridan 
"  had  written  the  two  best  comedies  of  his  age,"  and  therefore 
proposed  him  as  a  member  of  the  Literary  Club. 

This  celebrated  gathering  of  wit  and  whimsicality,  founded 
by  Johnson  himself  in  conjunction  with  Sir  J.  Reynolds,  was 
the  Helicon  of  London  Letters,  and  the  temple  which  the 
greatest  talker  of  his  age  had  built  for  himself,  and  in  which 
he  took  care  to  be  duly  worshiped.  It  met  at  the  Turk's 
Head  in  Gerrald  Street,  Soho,  every  Friday ;  and  from  seven 
in  the  evening  to  almost  any  hour  of  night  was  the  scene 
of  such  talk,  mainly  on  literature  and  learning,  as  has  never 
been  heard  since  in  this  country.  It  consisted  at  this  period 
of  twenty-six  members,  and  there  is  scarcely  one  among  them 
whose  name  is  not  known  to-day  as  well  as  any  in  the  history 
of  our  literature.  Besides  the  high-priests,  Reynolds  and  John- 
son, there  came  Edmund  Burke,  Fox,  Sheridan,  and  many  an- 
other of  less  note,  to  represent  the  senate :  Goldsmith,  Gib- 
bon, Adam  Smith,  Malone,  Dr.  Burney,  Percy,  Nugent,  Sir 
William  Jones,  three  Irish  bishops,  and  a  host  of  others, 
crowded  in  from  the  ranks  of  learning  and  literature.  Gar- 
rick  and  George  Colman  found  here  an  indulgent  audience ; 
and  the  light  portion  of  the  company  comprised  such  men  as 
Topham  Beauclerk,  Bennet  Langton,  Vesey,  and  a  dozen  of 
lords  and  baronets.  In  short,  they  were  picked  men,  and  if 
their  conversation  was  not  always  witty,  it  was  because  they 
had  all  wit,  and  frightened  one  another. 

Among  them  the  bullying  Doctor  rolled  in  majestic  grum- 
piness ;  scolded,  dogmatized,  contradicted,  pished  and  pshaw- 
ed, and  made  himself  generally  disagreeable;  yet,  hail  the 
omen,  Intellect!  such  was  the  force,  such  the  fame  of  his 
mind,  that  the  more  he  snorted,  the  more  they  adored  him — 
the  more  he  bullied,  the  more  humbly  they  knocked  under. 
He  was  quite  "His  Majesty"  at  the  Turk's  Head,  and  the 
courtiers  waited  for  his  coming  with  anxiety,  and  talked  of 


342  ANECDOTE   OF   GAKKICK'S   ADMITTANCE. 

him  till  he  came  in  the  same  manner  as  the  lackeys  in  the 
anteroom  of  a  crowded  monarch.  Boswell,  who,  by  the  way, 
was  also  a  member — of  course  he  was,  or  how  should  we  have 
had  the  great  man's  conversations  handed  down  to  us  ? — was 
sure  to  keep  them  up  to  the  proper  mark  of  adulation  if  they 
ever  flagged  in  it,  and  was  as  servile  in  his  admiration  in  the 
Doctor's  absence  as  when  he  was  there  to  call  him  a  fool  for 
his  pains. 

Thus,  on  one  occasion  while  "  King  Johnson"  tarried,  the 
courtiers  were  discussing  his  journey  to  the  Hebrides  and  his 
coming  away  "willing  to  believe  the  second  sight."  Some  of 
them  smiled  at  this,  but  Bozzy  was  down  on  them  with  more 
than  usual  servility.  "  He  is  only  witting  to  believe,"  he  ex- 
claimed. "J"  do  believe.  The  evidence  is  enough  for  me, 
though  not  for  his  great  mind.  What  will  not  fill  a  quart 
bottle  will  fill  a  pint  bottle.  I  am  filled  with  belief."  "  Are 
you  ?"  said  Colman,  slyly ;  "  then  cork  it  up." 

As  a  specimen  of  Johnson's  pride  in  his  own  club,  which 
always  remained  extremely  exclusive,  we  have  what  he  said 
of  Garrick,  who,  before  he  was  elected,  carelessly  told  Rey- 
nolds he  liked  the  club,  and  "thought  he  would  be  of  them." 

"  He'llbe  of  us!"  roared  the  Doctor  indignantly,  on  hearing 
of  this.  "  How  does  he  know  we  will  permit  him  ?  The  first 
duke  in  England  has  no  right  to  hold  such  language !" 

It  can  easily  be  imagined  that  when  "  His  Majesty"  ex- 
pressed his  approval  of  Richard  Brinsley,  then  a  young  man 
of  eight-and-twenty,  there  was  no  one  who  ventured  to  black- 
ball him,  and  so  Sheridan  was  duly  elected. 

The  fame  of  "The  School  for  Scandal"  was  a  substantial 
one  for  Richard  Brinsley,  and  in  the  following  year  he  ex- 
tended his  speculation  by  buying  the  other  moiety  of  Drury 
Lane.  This  theatre,  which  took  its  name  from  the  old  Cock- 
pit Theatre  in  Drury  Lane,  where  Killigrew  acted  in  the  days 
of  Charles  II.,  is  famous  for  the  number  of  times  it  has  been 
rebuilt.  The  first  house  had  been  destroyed  in  1674;  and 
the  one  in  which  Garrick  acted  was  built  by  Sir  Christopher 
Wren,  and  opened  with  a  prologue  by  Dryden.  In  1793  this 
was  rebuilt.  In  1809  it  was  burnt  to  the  ground;  and  on  its 
reopening  the  Committee  advertised  a  prize  for  a  prologue, 
which  was  supposed  to  be  tried  for  by  all  the  poets  and  poet- 
asters then  in  England.*  Horace  Smith  and  his  brother  seized 
the  opportunity  to  parody  the  style  of  the  most  celebrated  in 
their  delightful  "Rejected  Addresses."  Drury  Lane  has  al- 
ways been  grand  in  its  prologue,  for  besides  Dryden  and 

*  None  of  the  addresses  sent  in  having  given  satisfaction,  Lord  Byron  was 
requested  to  write  one,  which  he  did. 


NEW   FLIGHTS. — POLITICAL   AMBITION.  343 

Byron,  it  could  boast  of  Sam.  Johnson,  who  wrote  the  address 
when  Garrick  opened  the  theatre  in  1747.  No  theatre  ever 
had  more  great  names  connected  with  its  history. 

It  was  in  1778,  after  the  purchase  of  the  other  moiety  of 
this  property,  that  Sheridan  set  on  its  boards  "The  Critic." 
Though  this  was  denounced  as  itself  as  complete  a  plagiarism 
as  any  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary  could  make,  and  though  undoubt- 
edly the  idea  of  it  was  borrowed,  its  wit,  so  truly  Sheridaniap, 
and  its  complete  characters,  enhanced  its  author's  fame,  in 
spite  of  the  disappointment  of  those  who  expected  higher 
things  from  the  writer  of  "  The  School  for  Scandal."  Whether 
Sheridan  would  have  gone  on  improving,  had  he  remained  true 
to  the  drama,  "  The  Critic"  leaves  us  in  doubt.  But  he  was  a 
man  of  higher  ambition.  Step  by  step,  unexpectedly,  and 
apparently  unprepared,  he  had  taken  by  storm  the  outworks 
of  the  citadel  he  was  determined  to  capture,  and  he  seems  to 
have  cared  little  to  garrison  these  minor  fortresses.  He  had 
carried  off  from  among  a  dozen  suitors  a  wife  of  such  beauty 
that  Walpole  thus  writes  of  her  in  1773  : 

"I  was  at  the  ball  last  night,  and  have  only  been  at  the 
opera,  where  I  was  infinitely  struck  with  the  Carrara,  who  is 
the  prettiest  creature  upon  earth.  Mrs.  Hartly  I  find  still 
handsomer,  and  Miss  Linley  is  to  be  the  superlative  degree. 
The  king  admires  the  last,  and  ogles  her  as  much  as  he  dares 
in  so  holy  a  place  as  an  oratorio,  and  at  so  devout  a  service  as 
Alexander's  Feast." 

Yet  Sheridan  did  not  prize  Betsy  as  he  should  have  done, 
when  he  had  once  obtained  her.  Again  he  had  struck  boldly 
into  the  drama,  and  in  four  years  had  achieved  that  fame  as  a 
play-writer  to  which  even  Johnson  could  testify  so  handsomely. 
He"  now  quitted  this,  and  with  the  same  innate  power — the 
same  consciousness  of  success — the  same  readiness  of  genius — 
took  a  higher,  far  more  brilliant  flight  than  ever.  Yet  had  he 
garrisoned  the  forts  he  captured,  he  would  have  been  a  better, 
happier,  and  more  prosperous  man.  Had  he  been  true  to  the 
Maid  of  Bath,  his  character  would  not  have  degenerated  as  it 
did.  Had  he  kept  up  his  connection  with  the  drama,  he  would 
not  have  lost  so  largely  by  his  speculation  in  Drury  Lane. 
His  genius  became  his  temptation,  and  he  hurried  on  to  tri- 
timph  and  to  fall. 

Public  praise  is  a  siren  which  the  young  sailor  through  life 
can  not  resist.  Political  life  is  a  fine  aim,  even  when  its  seeker 
starts  without  a  shred  of  real  patriotism  to  conceal  his  personal 
ambition.  No  young  man  of  any  character  can  think,  without 
a  thrill  of  rapture,  on  the  glory  of  having  his  name — now  ob- 
scure— written  in  capitals  on  the  page  of  his  country's  history. 


344  THE  GAMING  MANIA. 

A  true  patriot  cares  nothing  for  fame ;  a  really  great  man 
is  content  to  die  nameless,  if  his  acts  may  but  survive  him. 
Sheridan  was  not  really  great,  and  it  may  be  doubted  if  he 
had  any  sincerity  in  his  political  views.  But  the  period  favor- 
ed the  rise  of  young  men  of  genius.  In  former  reigns  a  man 
could  have  little  hope  of  political  influence  without  being  first 
a  courtier ;  but  by  this  time  liberalism  had  made  giant  strides. 
The  leaven  of  revolutionary  ideas,  which  had  leavened  the 
whole  lump  in  France,  was  still  working  quietly  and  less  pas- 
sionately in  this  country,  and  being  less  repressed,  displayed 
itself  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  the  form 
of  a  strong  and  brilliant  opposition.  It  was  to  this  that  the 
young  men  of  ambition  attached  themselves,  rallying  under 
the  standard  of  Charles  James  Fox,  since  it  was  there  only 
that  their  talents  were  sufficient  to  recommend  them. 

To  this  party,  Sheridan,  laughing  in  his  sleeve  at  the  extrav- 
agance of  their  demands — so  that  when  they  clamored  for  a 
"  parliament  once  a  year,  or  oftener  if  need  be,"  he  pronounced 
himself  an  "  Oftener-if-need-be"  man — was  introduced,  when 
his  fame  as  a  literary  man  had  brought  him  into  contact  with 
some  of  its  hangers-on.  Fox,  after  his  first  interview  with 
him,  affirmed  that  he  had  always  thought  Hare  and  Charles 
Townsend  the  wittiest  men  he  had  ever  met,  but  that  Sheridan 
surpassed  them  both ;  and  Sheridan  was  equally  pleased  with 
"the  Man  of  the  People." 

The  first  step  to  this  political  position  was  to  become  a 
member  of  a  certain  club,  where  its  leaders  gambled  away 
their  money,  and  drank  away  their  minds — to  wit,  Brookes's. 
Pretty  boys,  indeed,  were  these  great  Whig  patriots  when 
turned  loose  in  these  precincts.  The  tables  were  for  stakes 
of  twenty  or  fifty  guineas,  but  soon  ran  up  to  hundreds.  What 
did  it  matter  to  Charles  James  Fox,  to  the  Man  of  the  People, 
whether  he  lost  five,  seven,  or  ten  thousand  of  a  night,  when 
the  one  half  came  out  of  his  father's,  the  other  out  of  Hebrew, 
pockets — the  sleek,  thick-lipped  owners  of  which  thronged  his 
Jerusalem  chamber,  as  he  called  his  back  sitting-room,  only  too 
glad  to  "  oblige"  him  to  any  amount  ?  The  rage  for  gaming 
at  this  pandemonium  may  be  understood  from  a  rule  of  the 
club,  which  it  was  found  necessary  to  make  to  interdict  it  in 
the  eating-room,  but  to  which  was  added  the  truly  British  ex"- 
ception,  which  allowed  two  members  of  Parliament  in  those 
days,  or  two  "  gentlemen"  of  any  kind,  to  toss  up  for  what 
they  had  ordered. 

This  charming  resort  of  the  dissipated  was  originally  estab- 
lished in  Pall  Mall  in  1764,  and  the  manager  was  that  same 
Alniack  who  afterward  opened  a  lady's  club  in  the  rooms  now 


ALMACK'S. — BROOKES'S.  345 

called  Willis's,  in  King  Street,  St.  James's ;  who  also  owned  the 
famous  Thatched  House,  and  whom  Gilly  Williams  described 
as  having  a  "  Scotch  face,  in  a  bag-wig,"  waiting  on  the  ladies 
at  supper.  In  1778  Brookes — a  wine-merchant  and  money- 
lender, whom  Tickell,  in  his  famous  "  Epistle  from  the  Hon. 
Charles  Fox,  partridge-shooting,  to  the  Hon.  John  Townsend, 
cruising,"  describes  in  these  lines : 

"  And  know  I've  bought  the  best  champagne  from  Brookes, 
From  liberal  Brookes,  whose  speculative  skill 
Is  hasty  credit,  and  a  distant  bill : 
Who,  nurs'd  in  clubs,  disdains  a  vulgar  trade ; 
Exults  to  trust,  and  blushes  to  be  paid" — 

built  and  opened  the  present  club-house  in  St.  James's  Street, 
and  thither  the  members  of  Almack's  migrated.  Brookes's 
speculative  skill,  however,  did  not  make  him  a  rich  man,  and 
the  "  gentlemen"  he  dealt  with  were  perhaps  too  gentlemanly 
to  pay  him.  He  died  poor  in  1782.  Almack's  at  first  con- 
sisted of  twenty-seven  members,  one  of  whom  was  C.  J.  Fox. 
Gibbon,  the  historian,  was  actually  a  member  of  it,  and  says 
that  in  spite  of  the  rage  for  play,  he  found  the  society  there 
rational  and  entertaining.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  wanted  to 
be  a  member  of  it  too.  "  You  see,"  says  Topham  Beauclerk 
thereupon,  "  what  noble  ambition  will  make  a  man  attempt. 
That  den  is  not  yet  opened,"  etc. 

Brookes's,  however,  was  far  more  celebrated,  and  besides 
Fox,  Reynolds,  and  Gibbon,  there  were  here  to  be  found 
Horace  Walpole,  David  Hume,  Burke,  Selwyn,  and  Garrick. 
It  would  be  curious  to  discover  how  much  religion,  how  much 
morality,  and  how  much  vanity  there  were  among  the  set. 
The  first  two  would  require  a  microscope  to  examine,  the  last 
an  ocean  to  contain  it.  But  let  Tickell  describe  its  inmates : 

"Soon  as  to  Brookes's  thence  thy  footsteps  bend, 

What  gratulations  thy  approach  attend ! 

See  Gibbon  rap  his  box — auspicious  sign, 

That  classic  compliment  and  wit  combine ; 

See  Beauclerk's  cheek  a  tinge  of  red  surprise, 

•  And  friendship  give  what  cruel  health  denies ; 

*  *  *  * 

Of  wit,  of  taste,  of  fancy  we'll  debate, 
If  Sheridan  for  once  be  not  too  late. 
But  scarce  a  thought  on  politics  we'll  spare, 
Unless  on  Polish  politics  with  Hare. 
Good-natured  Devon !  oft  shall  there  appear 
The  cool  complacence  of  thy  friendly  sneer ; 
Oft  shall  Fitzpatrick's  wit,  and  Stanhope's  ease, 
And  Burgoyne's  manly  sense  combine  to  please." 

To  show  how  high  gaming  ran  in  this  assembly  of  wits,  even 
so  early  as  1772,  there  is  a  memorandum  in  the  books,  stating 

P2 


346  TWO   VEKSIONS   OF  THE  ELECTION  TEICK. 

that  Mr.  Thynne  retired  from  the  club  in  disgust,  because  he 
had  only  won  £12,000  in  two  months.  The  principal  games 
at  this  period  were  quinze  and  faro. 

Into  this  eligible  club  Richard  Sheridan,  who  ten  years  be- 
fore had  been  agreeing  with  Halhed  on  the  bliss  of  making  a 
couple  of  hundred  pounds  by  their  literary  exertions,  now  es- 
sayed to  enter  as  a  member ;  but  in  vain.  One  black  ball  suf- 
ficed to  nullify  his  election,  and  that  one  was  dropped  in  by 
George  Selwyn,  who  would  not  have  the  son  of  an  actor 
among  them.  Again  and  again  he  made  the  attempt ;  again 
and  again  Selwyn  foiled  him ;  and  it  was  not  till  1780  that  he 
succeeded.  The  Prince  of  Wales  was  then  his  devoted  friend, 
and  was  determined  he  should  be  admitted  into  the  club.  The 
elections  at  that  time  took  place  between  eleven  at  night  and 
one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  the  "  greatest  gentleman  in 
Europe"  took  care  to  be  in  the  hall  when  the  ballot  began. 
Selwyn  came  down  as  usual,  bent  on  triumph.  The  prince 
called  him  to  him.  There  was  nothing  for  it ;  Selwyn  was 
forced  to  obey.  The  prince  walked  him  up  and  down  the 
hall,  engaging  him  in  an  apparently  most  important  conversa- 
tion. George  Selwyn  answered  him  question  after  question, 
and  made  desperate  attempts  to  slip  away.  The  other  George 
had  always  something  more  to  say  to  him.  The  long  finger 
of  the  clock  went  round,  and  Selwyn's  long  white  fingers  were 
itching  for  the  black  ball.  The  prince  was  only  more  and  more 
interested,  the  wit  only  more  and  more  abstracted.  Never  was 
the  one  George  more  lively,  or  the  other  more  silent.  But  it 
was  all  in  vain.  The  finger  of  the  clock  went  round  and  round, 
and  at  last  the  members  came  out  noisily  from  the  balloting- 
room,  and  the  smiling  faces  of  the  prince's  friends  showed  to 
the  unhappy  Selwyn  that  his  enemy  had  been  elected. 

So,  at  least,  runs  one  story.  The  other,  told  by  Sir  Nathan- 
iel Wraxall,  is  perhaps  more  probable.  It  appears  that  the 
Earl  of  Besborough  was  no  less  opposed  to  his  election  than 
George  Selwyn,  and  these  two  individuals  agreed  at  any  cost 
of  comfort  to  be  always  at  the  club  at  the  time  of.the  ballot 
to  throw  in  their  black  balls.  On  the  night  of  his  success, 
Lord  Besborough  was  there  as  usual,  and  Selwyn  was  at  his 
rooms  in  Cleveland  Row,  preparing  to  come  to  the  club.  Sud- 
denly a  chairman  rushed  into  Brookes's  with  an  important  note 
for  my  lord,  who,  on  tearing  it  open,  found  to  his  horror  that 
it  was  from  his  daughter-in-law,  Lady  Duncannon,  announcing 
that  his  house  in  Cavendish  Square  was  on  fire,  and  imploring 
him  to  come  immediately.  Feeling  confident  that  his  fellow- 
conspirator  would  be  true  to  his  post,  the  earl  set  off  at  once. 
But  almost  the  same  moment  Selwyn  received  a  message  in- 


ST.  STEPHEN'S  WON. — VOCAL  DIFFICULTIES.  347 

forming  him  that  his  adopted  daughter,  of  whom  he  was  very 
fond,  was  seized  with  an  alarming  illness.  The  ground  was 
cleared  ;  and  by  the  time  the  earl  returned,  having,  it  is  need- 
less to  say,  found  his  house  in  a  perfect  state  of  security,  and 
was  joined  by  Selwyn,  whose  daughter  had  never  been  better 
in  her  life,  the  actor's  son  was  elected,  and  the  conspirators 
found  they  had  been  duped. 

But  it  is  far  easier  in  this  country  to  get  into  that  House, 
where  one  has  to  represent  the  interests  of  thousands,  and 
take  a  share  in  the  government  of  a  nation,  than  to  be  admit- 
ted to  a  club  where  one  has  but  to  lounge,  to  gamble,  and  to 
eat  dinner ;  and  Sheridan  was  elected  for  the  town  of  Stafford 
with  probably  little  more  artifice  than  the  old  and  stale  one 
of  putting  five-pound  notes  under  voters'  glasses,  or  paying 
thirty  pounds  for  a  home-cured  ham.  Whether  he  bribed  or 
not,  a  petition  was  presented  against  his  election,  almost  as  a 
matter  of  course  in  those  days,  and  his  maiden  speech  was 
made  in  defense  of  the  good  burgesses  of  that  quiet  little 
county-town.  After  making  this  speech,  which  was  listened 
to  in  silence  on  account  of  his  reputation  as  a  dramatic  author, 
but  does  not  appear  to  have  been  very  wonderful,  he  rushed 
up  to  the  gallery,  and  eagerly  asked  his  friend  Woodfall  what 
he  thought  of  it.  That  candid  man  shook  his  head,  and  told 
him  oratory  was  not  his  forte.  Sheridan  leaned  his  head  on 
his  hand  a  moment,  and  then  exclaimed  with  vehement  em- 
phasis, "  It  is  in  me,  however,  and,  by  Heaven !  it  shall  come 
out," 

He  spoke  prophetically,  yet  not  as  the  great  man  who  de- 
termines to  conquer  difficulties,  but  rather  as  one  who  feels 
conscious  of  his  own  powers,  and  knows  that  they  must  show 
themselves  sooner  or  later.  Sheridan  found  himself  laboring 
under  the  same  natural  obstacles  as  Demosthenes — though  in 
a  less  degree — a  thick  and  disagreeable  tone  of  voice  ;  but  we 
do  not  find  in  the  indolent  but  gifted  Englishman  that  admi- 
rable perseverance,  that  conquering  zeal,  which  enabled  the 
Athenian  to  turn  these  very  impediments  to  his  own  advan- 
tage. He  did,  indeed,  prepare  his  speeches,  and  at  times  had 
fits  of  that  same  diligence  which  he  had  displayed  in  the  prep- 
aration of  "The  School  for  Scandal;"  but  his  indolent,  self- 
indulgent  mode  of  life  left  him  no  time  for  such  steady  devo- 
tion to  oratory  as  might  have  made  him  the  finest  speaker  of 
his  age,  for  perhaps  his  natural  abilities  were  greater  than 
those  of  Pitt,  Fox,  or  even  Burke,  though  his  education  was 
inferior  to  that  of  those  two  statesmen. 

From  this  time  Sheridan's  life  had  two  phases — that  of  a 
politician,  and  that  of  a  man  of  the  world.  With  the  former 


348  SHERIDAN   AS   A  WIT. 

we  have  nothing  to  do  in  such  a  memoir  as  this,  and  indeed 
it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  it  was  in  oratory,  the  drama,  or 
wit  that  he  gained  the  greatest  celebrity.  There  is,  however, 
some  difference  between  the  three  capacities.  On  the  mimic 
stage,  and  on  the  stage  of  the  country,  his  fame  rested  on  a 
very  few  grand  outbursts — some  matured,  prepared,  delibera- 
ted— others  spontaneous.  He  left  only  three  great  comedies, 
and  perhaps  we  may  say  only  one  really  grand.  In  the  same 
way  he  made  only  two  great  speeches,  or  perhaps  we  may  say 
only  one.  His  wit,  on  the  other  hand — though  that  too  is 
said  to  have  been  studied — was  the  constant  accompaniment 
of  his  daily  life,  and  Sheridan  has  not  left  two  or  three  cele- 
brated bon-mots,  but  a  hundred. 

But  even  in  his  political  career  his  wit,  which  must  then 
have  been  spontaneous,  won  him  almost  as  much  fame  as  his 
eloquence,  which  he  seems  to  have  reserved  for  great  occa- 
sions. He  was  the  wit  of  the  House.  Wit,  ridicule,  satire, 
quiet,  cool,  and  easy  sneers,  always  made  in  good  temper,  and 
always  therefore  the  more  bitter,  were  his  weapons,  and  they 
struck  with  unerring  accuracy.  At  that  time — nor  at  that 
time  only — the  "  Den  of  Thieves,"  as  Cobbett  called  our  sen- 
ate, was  a  cockpit  as  vulgar  and  personal  as  the  present  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States.  Party  spirit  meant  more  than  it 
has  ever  done  since,  and  scarcely  less  than  it  had  meant  when 
the  throne  itself  was  the  stake  for  which  parties  played  some 
forty  years  before.  There  was,  in  fact,  a  substantial  personal 
centre  for  each  side.  The  one  party  rallied  round  a  respecta- 
ble but  maniac  monarch,  whose  mental  afflictions  took  the  most 
distressing  form,  the  other  round  his  gay,  handsome,  dissolute 
— nay  disgusting — son,  at  once  his  rival  and  his  heir.  The 
spirit  of  each  party  was  therefore  personal,  and  their  attacks 
on  one  another  were  more  personal  than  any  thing  we  can  im- 
agine in  the  present  day  in  so  respectably  ridiculous  a  conclave 
as  the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  little  for  one  honorable 
gentleman  to  give  another  honorable  gentleman  the  lie  direct 
before  the  eyes  of  the  country.  The  honorable  gentlemen  de- 
scended— or,  as  they  thought,  ascended — to  the  most  vehe- 
ment invective,  and  such  was  at  times  the  torrent  of  personal 
abuse  which  parties  heaped  on  one  another,  while  good-natured 
John  Bull  looked  on  and  smiled  at  his  rulers,  that,  as  in  the 
United  States  of  to-day,  a  debate  was  often  the  prelude  to  a 
duel.  Pitt  and  Fox,  Tierney,  Adam,  Fullarton,  Lord  George 
Germain,  Lord  Shelburne,  and  Governor  Johnstone,  all  "  vin- 
dicated their  honor,"  as  the  phrase  went,  by  "  coffee  and  pis- 
tols for  four."  If  Sheridan  had  not  to  repeat  the  Bob  Acres 
scene  with  Captain  Matthews,  it  was  only  because  his  wonder- 


PITT'S  VULGAR  ATTACK.  349 

ful  good-humor  could  put  up  with  a  great  deal  that  others 
thought  could  only  be  expiated  by  a  hole  in  the  waistcoat. 

In  the  administration  of  the  Marquis  of  Rockingham  the 
dramatist  enjoyed  the  pleasures  of  office  for  less  than  a  year 
as  one  of  the  Under  Secretaries  of  State  in  1782.  In  the  next 
year  we  find  him  making  a  happy  retort  on  Pitt,  who  had 
somewhat  vulgarly  alluded  to  his  being  a  dramatic  author.  It 
was  on  the  American  question,  perhaps  the  bitterest  that  ever 
called  forth  the  acrimony  of  parties  in  the  House.  Sheridan, 
from  boyhood,  had  been  taunted  with  being  the  son  of  an  actor. 
He  had  been  called  "  the  player-boy"  at  school,  and  his  election 
at  Brookes's  had  been  opposed  on  the  same  grounds.  It  was 
evidently  his  bitterest  point,  and  Pitt  probably  knew  this  when, 
in  replying  to  a  speech  of  the  ex-dramatist's,  he  said  that  "  no 
man  admired  more  than  he  did  the  abilities  of  that  right  hon- 
orable gentleman,  the  elegant  sallies  of  his  thought,  the  gay 
effusions  of  his  fancy,  his  dramatic  turns,  and  his  epigrammatic 
point ;  and  if  they  were  reserved  for  the  proper  stage,  they 
would,  no  doubt,  receive  what  the  hon.  gentleman's  abilities 
always  did  receive,  the  plaudits  of  the  audience ;  and  it  would 
be  his  fortune  sui  plausu  gaudere  theatri.  But  this  was  not 
the  proper  scene  for  the  exhibition  of  those  elegancies."  This 
was  vulgar  in  Pitt,  and  probably  every  one  felt  so.  But  Sher- 
idan rose,  cool  and  collected,  and  quietly  replied : 

"  On  the  particular  sort  of  personality  which  the  right  hon. 
gentleman  has  thought  proper  to  make  use  of,  I  need  not  make 
any  comment.  The  propriety,  the  taste,  the  gentlemanly  point 
of  it,  must  have  been  obvious  to  the  House.  But  let  me  assure 
the  right  hon.  gentleman  that  I  do  now,  and  will  at  any  time 
he  chooses  to  repeat  this  sort  of  allusion,  meet  it  with  the  most 
sincere  good-humor.  Nay,  I  will  say  more :  flattered  and  en- 
couraged by  the  right  hon.  gentleman's  panegyric  on  my  tal- 
ents, if  ever  I  again  engage  in  the  compositions  he  alludes  to, 
I  may  be  tempted  to  an  act  of  presumption — to  attempt  an 
improvement  on  one  of  Ben  Jonson's  best  characters,  the 
character  of  the  Angry  Boy,  in  the  'Alchemist.' " 

The  fury  of  Pitt,  contrasted  with  the  coolness  of  the  man  he 
had  so  shamefully  attacked,  made  this  sally  irresistible,  and 
from  that  time  neither  "  the  angry  boy"  himself,  nor  any  of 
his  colleagues,  were  anxious  to  twit  Sheridan  on  his  dramatic 
pursuits. 

Pitt  wanted  to  lay  a  tax  on  every  horse  that  started  in  a 
race.  Lord  Surrey,  a  turfish  individual  of  the  day,  proposed 
one  of  five  pounds  on  the  winner.  Sheridan,  rising,  told  his 
lordship  that  the  next  time  he  visited  Newmarket  he  would 
probably  be  greeted  with  the  line : 


350  GRATTAN'S  QUIP. — SHERIDAN'S  SALLIES. 

"Jockey  of  Norfolk,  be  not  so  bold." 

Lord  Rolle,  the  butt  of  the  Opposition,  who  had  attacked 
him  in  the  famous  satire  "The  Rolliad,"  so  popular  that  it 
went  through  twenty-two  editions  in  twenty-seven  years,  ac- 
cused Sheridan  of  inflammatory  speeches  among  the  operatives 
of  the  northern  counties  on  the  cotton  question.  Sheridan  re- 
torted by  saying  that  he  believed  Lord  Rolle  must  refer  to 
"  Compositions  less  prosaic,  but  more  popular"  (meaning  the 
"Rolliad"),  and  thus  successfully  turned  the  laugh  against 
him. 

It  was  Grattan,  I  think,  who  said,  "  When  I  can't  talk  sense, 
I  talk  metaphor."  Sheridan  often  talked  metaphor,  though  he 
sometimes  mingled  it  with  sense.  His  famous  speech  about 
the  Begums  of  Oude  is  full  of  it,  but  we  have  one  or  two  in- 
stances before  that.  Thus  on  the  Duke  of  Richmond's  report 
about  fortifications,  he  said,  turning  to  the  duke,  that  "  holding 
in  his  hand  the  report  made  by  the  Board  of  Officers,  he  com- 
plimented the  noble  president  on  his  talents  as  an  engineer, 
which  were  strongly  evinced  in  planning  and  constructing  that 
very  paper He  has  made  it  a  contest  of  posts,  and  con- 
ducted his  reasoning  not  less  on  principles  of  trigonometry 
than  of  logic.  There  are  certain  assumptions  thrown  up,  like 
advanced  works,  to  keep  the  enemy  at  a  distance  from  the 
principal  object  of  debate ;  strong  provisos  protect  and  cover 
the  flanks  of  his  assertions :  his  very  queries  are  his  casemates," 
and  so  on. 

When  Lord  Mulgrave  said,  on  another  occasion,  that  any 
man  using  his  influence  to  obtain  a  vote  for  the  crown  ought 
to  lose  his  head,  Sheridan  quietly  remarked,  that  he  was  glad 
his  lordship  had  said  "ought  to  lose  his  head,"'not  would  have 
lost  it,  for  in  that  case  the  learned  gentleman  would  not  have 
had  that  evening  "  a  face  to  have  shown  among  us." 

Such  are  a  few  of  his  well-remembered  replies  in  the  House ; 
but  his  fame  as  an  orator  rested  on  the  splendid  speeches  which 
he  made  at  the  impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings.  The  first 
of  these  was  made  in  the  House  on  the  7th  of  February,  1787. 
The  whole  story  of  the  corruption,  extortions,  and  cruelty  of 
the  worst  of  many  bad  rulers  who  have  been  imposed  upon 
that  unhappy  nation  of  Hindoostan,  and  who,  ignorant  of  how 
to  parcere  subjectis,  have  gone  on  in  their  unjust  oppression, 
only  rendering  it  the  more  dangerous  by  weak  concessions,  is 
too  well  known  to  need  a  recapitulation  here.  The  worst 
feature  in  the  whole  of  Hastings's  misconduct  was,  perhaps, 
his  treatment  of  those  unfortunate  ladies  whose  money  he 
coveted,  the  Begums  of  Oude.  The  Opposition  was  determin- 
ed to  make  the  governor  general's  conduct  a  state  question, 


WONDERFUL  EFFECT   OF   SHEEIDAN's   ELOQUENCE.         351 

but  their  charges  had  been  received  with  little  attention,  till 
on  this  day  Sheridan  rose  to  denounce  the  cruel  extortioner. 
He  spoke  for  five  hours  and  a  half,  and  surpassed  all  he  had 
ever  said  in  eloquence.  The  subject  was  one  to  find  sympathy 
in  the  hearts  of  Englishmen,  who,  though  they  beat  their  own 
wives,  are  always  indignant  at  a  man  who  dares  to  lay  a  little 
finger  on  any  body  else's.  Then,  too,  the  subject  was  Oriental : 
it  might  even  be  invested  with  something  of  romance  and  po- 
etry ;  the  zenaiiah,  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  the  oppressed  natives, 
had  been  ruthlessly  violated ;  under  a  glaring  Indian  sun,  amid 
the  luxuriance  of  Indian  foliage,  these  acts  had  been  commit- 
ted, etc.,  etc.  It  was  a  fertile  theme  for  a  poet,  and  however 
little  Sheridan  cared  for  the  Begums  and  their  wrongs — and 
that  he  did  care  little  appears  from  what  he  afterward  said  of 
Hastings  himself — he  could  evidently  make  a  telling  speech 
out  of  the  theme,  and  he  did  so.  Walpole  says  that  he  turned 
every  body's  head.  "  One  heard  every  body  in  the  street  rav- 
ing on  the  wonders  of  that  speech ;  for  my  part,  I  can  not  be- 
lieve it  was  so  supernatural  as  they  say."  He  affirms  that  there 
must  be  a  witchery  in  Mr.  Sheridan,  who  had  no  diamonds — 
as  Hastings  had— to  win  favor  with,  and  says  that  the  Opposi- 
tion may  be  fairly  charged  with  sorcery.  Burke  declared  the 
speech  to  be  "  the  most  astonishing  effort  of  eloquence,  argu- 
ment, and  wit  united,  of  which  there  was  any  record  or  tradi- 
tion." Fox  affirmed  that  "  all  he  had  ever  heard,  all  he  had 
ever  read,  when  compared  with  it,  dwindled  into  nothing,  and 
vanished  like  vapor  before  the  sun."  But  these  were  partisans. 
Even  Pitt  acknowledged  "  that  it  surpassed  all  the  eloquence 
of  ancient  and  modern  times,  and  possessed  every  thing  that 
genius  or  art  could  furnish  to  agitate  and  control  the  human 
mind."  One  member  confessed  himself  so  unhinged  by  it,  that 
he  moved  an  adjournment,  because  he  could  not,  in  his  then 
state  of  mind,  give  an  unbiased  vote.  But  the  highest  testi- 
mony was  that  of  Logan,  the  defender  of  Hastings.  At  the 
end  of  the  first  hour  of  the  speech,  he  said  to  a  friend,  "  All 
this  is  declamatory  assertion  without  proof."  Another  hour's 
speaking,  and  he  muttered,  "This  is  a  most  wonderful  ora- 
tion !"  A  third,  and  he  confessed  "  Mr.  Hastings  has  acted 
very  unjustifiably."  At  the  end  of  the  fourth,  he  exclaimed, 
"  Mr.  Hastings  is  a  most  atrocious  criminal."  And  before  the 
speaker  had  sat  down,  he  vehemently  protested  that  "  Of  all 
monsters  of  iniquity,  the  most  enormous  is  Warren  Hastings." 
Such  in  those  days  was  the  effect  of  eloquence ;  an  art  which 
has  been  eschewed  in  the  present  House  of  Commons,  and 
which  our  newspapers  affect  to  think  is  much  out  of  place  in 
an  assembly  met  for  calm  deliberation.  Perhaps  they  are 


352  THE   StTPKEME   EFFOBT. 

right ;  but  oh !  for  the  golden  words  of  a  Sheridan,  a  Fox — 
even  a  Pitt  and  Burke. 

It  is  said,  though  not  proved,  that  on  this  same  night  of 
Sheridan's  glory  in  the  House  of  Commons,  his  "  School  for 
Scandal"  was  acted  with  "  rapturous  applause"  at  Covent  Gar- 
den, and  his  "Duenna"  no  less  successfully  at  Drury  Lane. 
What  a  pitch  of  glory  for  the  dunce  who  had  been  shamed 
into  learning  Greek  verbs  at  Harrow !  Surely  Dr.  Parr  must 
then  have  confessed  that  a  man  can  be  great  without  the  clas- 
sics— nay,  without  even  a  decent  English  education,  for  Sheri- 
dan knew  comparatively  little  of  history  and  literature,  cer- 
tainly less  than  the  men  against  whom  he  was  pitted  or  whose 
powers  he  emulated.  He  has  been  known  to  say  to  his  friends, 
when  asked  to  take  part  with  them  on  some  important  ques- 
tion, "  You  know  I'm  an  ignoramus — instruct  me  and  I'll  do 
my  best."  He  had  even  to  rub  up  his  arithmetic  when  he 
thought  he  had  some  chance  of  being  made  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer ;  but,  perhaps,  many  a  statesman  before  and  after 
him  has  done  as  much  as  that. 

No  wonder  that  after  such  a  speech  in  the  House  the  cel- 
ebrated trial  which  commenced  in  the  beginning  of  the  follow- 
ing year  should  have  roused  the  attention  of  the  whole  nation. 
The  proceedings  opened  in  Westminster  Hall,  the  noblest  room 
in  England,  on  the  13th  of  February,  1788.  The  Queen  and 
four  of  her  daughters  were  seated  in  the  Duke  of  Newcastle's 
box ;  the  Prince  of  Wales  walked  in  at  the  head  of  a  hundred 
and  fifty  peers  of  the  realm.  The  spectacle  was  imposing 
enough.  But  the  trial  proceeded  slowly  for  some  months,  and 
it  was  not  till  the  3d  of  June  that  Sheridan  rose  to  make  his 
second  great  speech  on  this  subject. 

The  excitement  was  then  at  its  highest.  Two  thirds  of  the 
peers  with  the  peeresses  and  their  daughters  were  present, 
and  the  whole  of  the  vast  hall  was  crowded  to  excess.  The 
sun  shone  in  brightly  to  light  up  the  gloomy  building,  and  the 
whole  scene  was  splendid.  Such  was  the  enthusiasm  that  peo- 
ple paid  fifty  guineas  for  a  ticket  to  hear  the  first  orator  of 
his  day,  for  such  he  then  was.  The  actor's  son  felt  the  enliv- 
ening influence  of  a  full  audience.  He  had  been  long  prepar- 
ing for  this  moment,  and  he  threw  into  his  speech  all  the  the- 
atrical eflect  of  which  he  had  studied  much  and  inherited 
more.  He  spoke  for  many  hours  on  the  3d,  5th,  and  6th,  and 
concluded  with  these  words : 

"  They  (the  House  of  Commons)  exhort  you  by  every  thing 
that  calls  sublimely  upon  the  heart  of  man,  by  the  majesty  of 
that  justice  which  this  bold  man  has  libeled,  by  the  wide  fame 
of  your  own  tribunal,  by  the  sacred  pledges  by  which  you 


THE   STAB   CULMINATES.  353 

swear  in  the  solemn  hour  of  decision,  knowing  that  that  decis- 
ion will  then  bring  you  the  highest  reward  that  ever  blessed 
the  heart  of  man,  the  consciousness  of  having  done  the  great- 
est act  of  mercy  for  the  world  that  the  earth  has  ever  yet  re- 
ceived from  any  hand  but  heaven !  My  Lords,  I  have  done." 

Sheridan's  valet  was  very  proud  of  his  master's  success,  and 
as  he  had  been  to  hear  the  speech,  was  asked  what  part  he  con- 
sidered the  finest.  Plush  replied  by  putting  himself  into  Sher- 
ry's attitude,  and  imitating  his  voice  admirably,  solemnly  ut- 
tering, "  My  Lords,  I  have  done !"  He  should  have  added  the 
word  "nothing."  Sheridan's  eloquence  had  no  more  effect 
than  the  clear  proofs  of  Hastings's  guilt,  and  the  impeachment, 
as  usual,  was  but  a  troublesome  sham,  to  satisfy  the  Opposition 
and  dust  the  eyeballs  of  the  country.  Oh !  Sham,  Sham,  Sham ! 
if  you  are  ever  deposed  and  want  a  kingdom  in  a  quiet  corner 
of  the  globe,  come  to  this  island.  We  have  long  honored  you 
here,  and  sacrifice  to  you  at  every  general  election  and  in  ev- 
ery parliamentary  Commission.  Sham,  you  will  be  always 
welcome  to  the  land  of  Johannes  Bull ! 

Sheridan's  great  speech  was  made.  The  orator  has  con- 
cluded his  oration;  fame  was  complete,  and  no  more  was 
wanted.  Adieu,  then,  blue-books  and  parties,  and  come  on  the 
last  grand  profession  of  this  man  of  many  talents — that  of  the 
wit.  That  it  was  a  profession  there  can  be  no  doubt,  for  he 
lived  on  it :  it  was  all  his  capital.  He  paid  his  bills  in  that 
coin  alone :  he  paid  his  workmen,  his  actors,  carpenters,  build- 
ers with  no  more  sterling  metal ;  with  that  ready  tool  he  ex- 
tracted loans  from  the  very  men  who  came  to  be  paid ;  that 
brilliant  ornament  maintained  his  reputation  in  the  senate,  and 
his  character  in  society.  But  wit  without  wisdom — the  froth 
without  the  fluid — the  capital  without  the  pillar — is  but  a  poor 
fortune,  a  wretched  substitute  for  real  worth  and  honest  utili- 
ty. For  a  time  men  forgave  to  Mr.  Sheridan — extravagant 
swindler,  drunkard,  and  debauchee — what  would  long  before 
have  brought  an  honester,  better,  but  less  amusing  man, to  a 
debtor's  prison  and  the  contempt  of  society ;  but  only  for  a 
time. 

Sheridan  has  now  reached  the  pinnacle,  of  his  fame,  and 
from  this  point  we  have  to  trace  that  decline  which  ended  so 
awfully. 

When  we  call  him  a  swindler,  we  must  not  be  supposed  to 
imply  that  he  was  so  in  heart.  It  is  pleaded  for  him  that  he 
swindled  "for  the  fun  of  the  thing,"  like  a  modern  Robin 
Hood,  and  like  that  forester  bold,  he  was  mightily  generous 
with  other  men's  money.  But  Sheridan  had  the  advantage  of 
being  born  in  a  respectable  station.  Had  his  father  been  a 


354  NATIVE  TASTE  FOB   SWINDLING. 

tinker  or  cobbler  instead  of  a  comedian,  no  doubt  the  son 
would  have  ended  his  days  in  some  salubrious  colony,  chained 
some  equally  inglorious  fellow-swindler,  and  no  one  would 
have  written  his  Life,  or  taken  a  moment's  pains  to  prove  him 
any  better  than  a  jury  had  pronounced  him.  Thieving  is 
thieving  whether  in  sport  or  earnest,  and  Sheridan,  no  doubt, 
made  it  a  very  profitable  employment.  He  had  always  a  taste 
for  the  art  of  duping,  and  he  had  begun  early  in  life — soon 
after  leaving  Harrow.  He  was  spending  a  few  days  at  Bris- 
tol, and  wanted  a  pair  of  new  boots,  but  could  not  afford  to 
pay  for  them.  Shortly  before  he  left,  he  called  on  two  boot- 
makers, and  ordered  of  each  a  pair,  promising  payment  on  de- 
livery. He  fixed  the  morning  of  his  departure  for  the  trades- 
men to  send  in  their  goods.  When  the  first  arrived  he  tried 
on  the  boots,  complained  that  that  for  the  right  foot  pinched 
a  little,  and  ordered  Crispin  to  take  it  back,  stretch  it,  and 
bring  it  again  at  nine  the  next  morning.  The  second  arrived 
soon  after,  and  this  time  it  was  the  boot  for  the  left  foot  which 
pinched.  Same  complaint ;  same  order  given ;  each  had  taken 
away  only  the  pinching  boot,  and  left  the  other  behind.  The 
same  afternoon  Sheridan  left  in  his  new  boots  for  town,  and 
when  the  two  shoemakers  called  at  nine  the  next  day,  each 
with  a  boot  in  his  hand,  we  can  imagine  their  disgust  at  find- 
ing how  neatly  they  had  been  duped. 

Anecdotes  of  this  kind  swarm  in  every  account  of  Dick 
Sheridan — many  of  them,  perhaps,  quite  apocryphal,  others  ex- 
aggerated or  attributed  to  this  noted  trickster,  but  all  tending 
to  show  how  completely  he  was  master  of  this  high  art.  His 
ways  of  eluding  creditors  used  to  delight  me,  I  remember, 
when  an  Oxford  boy,  often  inclined  to  imitate  the  great  com- 
edian, and  they  are  only  paralleled  by  Oxford  stories.  One  of 
these  may  not  be  generally  known,  and  was  worthy  of  Sherry. 
Every  Oxonian  knows  Hall,  the  boat-builder  at  Folly  Bridge. 
Mrs.  Hall  was,  in  my  time,  proprietress  of  those  dangerous 
skiffs,  and  nutshell  canoes  which  we  young  harebrains  delight- 
ed to  launch  on  the  Isis.  Some  youthful  Sheridanian  had  a 
long  account  with  this  elderly  and  bashful  personage,  who  had 
applied  in  vain  for  her  money,  till,  coming  one  day  to  his 
rooms,  she  announced  her  intention  not  to  leave  till  the  money 
was  paid.  "  Very  well,  Mrs.  Hall,,  then  you  must  sit  down  and 
make  yourself  comfortable  while  I  dress,  for  I  am  going  out 
directly."  Mrs.  H.  sat  down  composedly,  and  with  equal  com- 
posure the  youth  took  off  his  coat.  Mrs.  H.  was  not  abashed, 
but  in  another  moment  the  debtor  removed  his  waistcoat  also. 
Mrs.  H.  was  still  immovable.  Sundry  other  articles  of  dress 
followed,  and  the  good  lady  began  to  be  nervous.  "Now, 


DUNS  OUTWITTED.  355 

Mrs.  Hall,  you  can  stay  if  you  like,  but  I  assure  you  that  I  am 
going  to  change  all  my  dress."  Suiting  the  action  to  the 
word,  he  began  to  remove  his  lower  garments,  when  Mrs.  Hall, 
shocked  and  furious,  rushed  from  the  room. 

This  reminds  us  of  Sheridan's  treatment  of  a  female  cred- 
itor. He  had  for  some  years  hired  his  carriage-horses  from 
Edbrooke  in  Clarges  Street,  and  his  bill  was  a  heavy  one. 
Mrs.  Edbrooke  wanted  a  new  bonnet,  and  blew  up  her  mate 
for  not  insisting  on  payment.  The  curtain  lecture  was  follow- 
ed next  day  by  a  refusal  to  allow  Mr.  Sheridan  to  have  the 
horses  till  the  account  was  settled.  Mr.  Sheridan  sent  the  po- 
litest possible  message  in  reply,  begging  that  Mrs.  Edbrooke 
would  allow  his  coachman  to  drive  her  in  his  own  carriage  to 
his  door,  and  promising  that  the  matter  should  be  satisfactorily 
arranged.  The  good  woman  was  delighted,  dressed  in  her 
best,  and  bill  in  hand,  entered  the  M.  P.'s  chariot.  Sheridan 
meanwhile  had  given  orders  to  his  servants.  Mrs.  Edbrooke 
was  shown  up  into  the  back  drawing-room,  where  a  slight 
luncheon,  of  which  she  was  begged  to  partake,  was  laid  out ; 
and  she  was  assured  that  her  debtor  would  not  keep  her  wait- 
ing long,  though  for  the  moment  engaged.  The  horse-dealer's 
wife  sat  down  and  discussed  a  wing  of  chicken  and  glass  of 
wine,  and  in  the  mean  time  her  victimizer  had  been  watching 
his  opportunity,  slipped  down  stairs,  jumped  into  the  vehicle, 
and  drove  off.  Mrs.  Edbrooke  finished  her  lunch  and  waited 
in  vain ;  ten  minutes,  twenty,  thirty,  passed,  and  then  she  rang 
the  bell :  "  Very  sorry,  ma'am,  but  Mr.  Sheridan  went  out  on 
important  business  half  an  hour  ago."  "  And  the  carriage  ?" 
"  Oh,  ma'am,  Mr.  Sheridan  never  walks." 

He  procured  his  wine  in  the  same  style.  Chalier,  the  wine- 
merchant,  was  his  creditor  to  a  large  amount,  and  had  stopped 
supplies.  Sheridan  was  to  give  a  grand  dinner  to  the  leaders 
of  the  Opposition,  and  had  no  port  or  sherry  to  offer  them. 
On  the  morning  of  the  day  fixed  he  sent  for  Chalier,  and  told 
him  he  wanted  to  settle  his  account.  The  importer,  much 
pleased,  said  he  would  go  home  and  bring  it  at  once.  "  Stay," 

cried  the  debtor,  "will  you  dine  with  me  to-day  ?  Lord , 

Sir ,  and  So-and-so  are  coming."  Chalier  was 

flattered  and  readily  accepted.  Returning  to  his  office,  he  told 
his  clerk  that  he  should  dine  with  Mr.  Sheridan,  and  therefore 
leave  early.  At  the  proper  hour  he  arrived  in  full  dress,  and 
was  no  sooner  in  the  house  than  his  host  dispatched  a  message 
to  the  clerk  at  the  office,  saying  that  Mr.  Chalier  wished  him 
to  send  up  at  once  three  dozen  of  Burgundy,  two  of  claret, 
two  of  port,  etc.,  etc.  Nothing  seemed  more  natural,  and  the 
wine  was  forwarded,  just  in  time  for  the  dinner.  It  was  high- 


356  THE   LAWYER  JOCKEYED. 

ly  praised  by  the  guests,  who  asked  Sheridan  who  was  his 
wine-merchant.  The  host  bowed  toward  Chalier,  gave  him  a 
high  recommendation,  and  impressed  him  with  the  belief  that 
he  was  telling  a  polite  falsehood  in  order  to  secure  him  other 
customers.  Little  did  he  think  that  he  was  drinking  his  own 
wine,  and  that  it  was  not,  and  probably  never  would  be,  paid 
for! 

In  like  manner,  when  he  wanted  a  particular  Burgundy  from 
an  innkeeper  at  Richmond,  who  declined  to  supply  it  till  his 
bill  was  paid,  he  sent  for  the  man,  and  had  no  sooner  seen  him 
safe  in  the  house  than  he  drove  off  to  Richmond,  saw  his  wife, 
told  her  he  had  just  had  a  conversation  with  mine  host,  settled 
every  thing,  and  would,  to  save  them  trouble,  take  the  wine 
with  him  in  his  carriage.  The  condescension  overpowered  the 

food  woman,  who  ordered  it  at  once  to  be  produced,  and 
heridan  drove  home  about  the  time  that  her  husband  was  re- 
turning to  Richmond,  weary  of  waiting  for  his  absent  debtor. 
But  this  kind  of  trickery  could  not  always  succeed  without 
some  knowledge  of  his  creditor's  character.  In  the  case  of 
Holloway,  the  lawyer,  Sheridan  took  advantage  of  his  well- 
known  vanity  of  his  judgment  of  horse-flesh.  Kelly  gives  the 
anecdote  as  authentic.  He  was  walking  one  day  with  Sheri- 
dan, close  to  the  church-yard  of  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden, 
when,  as  ill-luck  would  have  it,  up  comes  Holloway  on  horse- 
back, and  in  a  furious  rage,  complains  that  he  has  called  on 
Mr.  Sheridan  time  and  again  in  Hertford  Street,  and  can  never 
gain  admittance.  He  proceeds  to  violent  threats,  and  slangs 
his  debtor  roundly.  Sheridan,  cool  as  a  whole  bed  of  cucum- 
bers, takes  no  notice  of  these  attacks,  but  quietly  exclaims, 
"  What  a  beautiful  creature  you're  riding,  Holloway !"  The 
lawyer's  weak  point  was  touched. 

"  You  were  speaking  to  me  the  other  day  about  a  horse  for 
Mrs.  Sheridan ;  now  this  would  be  a  treasure  for  a  lady." 

"  Does  he  canter  well  ?"  asked  Sheridan,  with  a  look  of  bus. 
iness. 

"  Like  Pegasus  himself." 

"  If  that's  the  case,  I  shouldn't  mind,  Holloway,  stretching  a 
point  for  him.  Do  you  mind  showing  me  his  paces  ?" 

"  Not  at  all,"  replies  the  lawyer,  only  too  happy  to  show 
off  his  own ;  and  touching  up  the  horse,  put  him  to  a  quiet 
canter.  The  moment  is  not  to  be  lost ;  the  church-yard  gate 
is  at  hand ;  Sheridan  slips  in,  knowing  that  his  mounted  tor- 
mentor can  not  follow  him,  and  there  bursts  into  a  roar  of 
laughter,  which  is  joined  in  by  Kelly,  but  not  by  the  returning 
Holloway. 

But  if  he  escaped  an  importunate  lawyer  once  in  a  way  like 


•A  TBEA8UEE  FOE  A  LADY*1— 8UEKIDAN  AND  THE  LAWYEB. 


ADVENTURES   WITH   BAILIFFS.  359 

this,  he  required  more  ingenuity  to  get  rid  of  the  limbs  of  the 
law,  when  they  came,  as  they  did  frequently  in  his  later  years. 
It  was  the  fashionable  thing  in  by-gone  novels  of  the  "Pelham" 
school,  and  even  in  more  recent  comedies,  to  introduce  a  well- 
dressed  sheriff' s  officer  at  a  dinner-party  or  ball,  and  take  him 
through  a  variety  of  predicaments,  ending,  at  length,  in  the 
revelation  of  his  real  character ;  and  probably  some  such  scene 
is  still  enacted  from  time  to  time  in  the  houses  of  the  extrava- 
gant :  but  Sheridan's  adventures  with  bailiffs  seem  to  have  ex- 
cited more  attention.  In  the  midst  of  his  difficulties  he  never 
ceased  to  entertain  his  friends,  and"  why  should  he  not  do  so, 
since  he  had  not  to  pay?"  "  Pay  your  bills,  sir  ?  what  a  shame- 
ful waste  of  money !"  he  once  said.  Thus,  one  day  a  young 
friend  was  met  by  him  and  taken  back  to  dinner,  "  quite  in  a 
quiet  way,  just  to  meet  a  very  old  friend  of  mine,  a  man  of 
great  talent,  and  most  charming  companion."  When  they  ar- 
rived they  found  "  the  old  friend"  already  installed,  and  pre- 
senting a  somewhat  unpolished  appearance,  which  the  young 
man  explained  to  himself  by  supposing  him  to  be  a  genius  of 
somewhat  low  extraction.  His  habits  at  dinner,  the  eager 
look,  the  free  use  of  his  knife,  and  so  forth,  were  all  accounted 
for  in  the  same  way,  but  that  he  was  a  genius  of  no  slight  dis- 
tinction was  clear  from  the  deep  respect  and  attention  with 
which  Sheridan  listened  to  his  slightest  remarks,  and  asked 
his  opinion  on  English  poetry.  Meanwhile  Sheridan  and  the 
servant  between  them  plied  the  genius  very  liberally  with 
wine ;  and  the  former,  rising,  made  him  a  complimentary  speech 
on  his  critical  powers,  while  the  young  guest,  who  had  heard 
nothing  from  his  lips  but  the  commonest  platitudes  in  very 
bad  English,  grew  more  and  more  amused.  The  wine  told  in 
time,  the  "  genius"  sang  songs  which  were  more  Saxon  than 
delicate,  talked  loud,  clapped  his  host  on  the  shoulder,  and  at 
last  rolled  fairly  under  the  table.  "  Now,"  said  Sheridan, 
quite  calmly  to  his  young  friend,  "  we  will  go  up  stairs ;  and, 
Jack"  (to  his  servant)  "take  that  man's  hat  and  give  him  to 
the  watch."  He  then  explained  in  the  same  calm  tone,  that 
this  was  a  bailiff  of  whose  company  he  was  growing  rather 
tired,  and  wanted  to  be  rid. 

But  his  finest  tricks  were  undoubtedly  those  by  which  he 
turned,  harlequin -like,  a  creditor  into  a  lender.  This  was 
done  by  sheer  force  of  persuasion,  by  assuming  a  lofty  indig- 
nation, or  by  putting  forth  his  claims  to  mercy  with  the  most 
touching  eloquence,  over  which  he  would  laugh  heartily  when 
his  point  was  gamed.  He  was  often  compelled  to  do  this  dur- 
ing his  theatrical  management,  when  a  troublesome  creditor 
might  have  interfered  with  the  success  of  the  establishment. 


360  HOUSE    OF    COMMONS    GKEEK. 

He  talked  over  an  upholsterer  who  came  with  a  writ  for  £350, 
till  the  latter  handed  him,  instead,  a  check  for  £200.  He  once, 
when  the  actors  struck  for  arrears  of  wages  to  the  amount  of 
£3000,  and  his  bankers  refused  flatly  to  Kelly  to  advance  an- 
other penny,  screwed  the  whole  sum  out  of  them  in  less  than 
a  quarter  of  an  hour  by  sheer  talk.  He  got  a  gold  watch  from 
Harris,  the  manager,  with  whom  he  had  broken  several  ap- 
pointments, by  complaining  that  as  he  had  no  watch  he  could 
never  tell  the  time  fixed  for  their  meetings ;  and,  as  for  put- 
ting off  pressing  creditors,  and  turning  furious  foes  into  affec- 
tionate friends,  he  was  such  an  adept  at  it,  that  his  Deputation 
as  a  dun-destroyer  is  quite  on  a  par  with  his  fame  as  comedian 
and  orator. 

Hoaxing,  a  style  of  amusement  fortunately  out  of  fashion 
now,  was  almost  a  passion  with  him,  and  his  practical  jokes 
were  as  merciless  as  his  satire.  He  and  Tickell,  who  had  mar- 
ried the  sister  of  his  wife,  used  to  play  them  off  on  one  another 
like  a  couple  of  schoolboys.  One  evening,  for  instance,  Sher- 
idan got  together  all  the  crockery  in  the  house  and  arranged 
it  in  a  dark  passage,  leaving  a  small  channel  for  escape  for  him- 
self, and  then,  having  teased  Tickell  till  he  rushed  after  him, 
bounded  out  and  picked  his  way  gingerly  along  the  passage. 
His  friend  followed  him  unwittingly,  and  at  the  first  step  stum- 
bled over  a  washhand-basin,  and  fell  forward  with  a  crash  on 
piles  of  plates  and  dishes,  which  cut  his  face  and  hands  in  a 
most  cruel  manner,  Sheridan  all  the  while  laughing  immoder- 
ately at  the  end  of  the  passage,  secure  from  vengeance. 

But  his  most  impudent  hoax  was  that  on  the  Honorable 
House  of  Commons  itself.  Lord  Belgrave  had  made  a  very 
telling  speech  which  he  wound  up  with  a  Greek  quotation, 
loudly  applauded.  Sheridan  had  no  arguments  to  meet  him 
with ;  so  rising,  he  admitted  the  force  of  his  lordship's  quota- 
tion (of  which  he  probably  did  not  understand  a  word),  but 
added  that  had  he  gone  a  little  farther,  and  completed  the 
passage,  he  would  have  seen  that  the  context  completely  al- 
tered the  sense.  He  would  prove  it  to  the  House,  he  said, 
and  forthwith  rolled  forth  a  grand  string  of  majestic  gibber- 
ish so  well  imitated  that  the  whole  assembly  cried,  "  Hear, 
hear !"  Lord  Belgrave  rose  again,  and  frankly  admitted  that 
the  passage  had  the  meaning  ascribed  to  it  by  the  honorable 
gentleman,  and  that  he  had  overlooked  it  at  the  moment.  At 
the  end  of  the  evening,  Fox,  who  prided  himself  on  his  clas- 
sical lore,  came  up  to  and  said  to  him,  "  Sheridan,  how  came 
you  to  be  so  ready  with  that  passage  ?  It  is  certainly  as  you 
say,  but  I  was  not  aware  of  it  before  you  quoted  it."  Sherry 
was  wise  enough  to  keep  his  own  counsel  for  the  time,  but 


CURIOUS   MIMICRY.  361 

must  have  felt  delightfully  tickled  at  the  ignorance  of  the 
would-be  savants  with  whom  he  was  politically  associated. 
Probably  Sheridan  could  not  at  any  time  have  quoted  a  whole 
passage  of  Greek  on  the  spur  of  the  moment ;  but  it  is  certain 
that  he  had  not  kept  up  his  classics,  and  at  the  time  in  ques- 
tion must  have  forgotten  the  little  he  ever  knew  of  them. 

This  facility  of  imitating  exactly  the  sound  of  a  language 
without  introducing  a  single  word  of  it  is  not  so  very  rare, 
but  is  generally  possessed  in  greater  readiness  by  those  who 
know  no  tongue  but  their  own,  and  are  therefore  more  struck 
by  the  strangeness  of  a  foreign  one,  when  hearing  it.  Many 
of  us  have  heard  Italian  songs  in  which  there  was  not  a  word 
of  actual  Italian  sung  in  London  burlesques,  and  some  of  us 
have  laughed  at  Levassor's  capital  imitation  of  English ;  but 
perhaps  the  cleverest  mimic  of  the  kind  I  ever  heard  was  M. 
Laffitte,  brother  of  that  famous  banker  who  made  his  fortune 
by  picking  up  a  pin.  This  gentleman  could  speak  nothing 
but  French,  but  had  been  brought  by  his  business  into  con- 
tact with  foreigners  of  every  race  at  Paris,  and  when  he  once 
began  his  little  trick,  it  was  impossible  to  believe  that  he  was 
not  possessed  of  a  gift  of  tongues.  His  German  and  Italian 
w^ere  good  enough,  but  his  English  was  so  splendidly  coun- 
terfeited, that  after  listening  to  him  for  a  short  time,  I  sud- 
denly heard  a  roar  of  laughter  from  all  present,  for  I  had  act- 
ually unconsciously  answered  him,  "Yes,"  "No,"  "Exactly 
so,"  and  "  I  quite  agree  with  you !" 

Undoubtedly  much  of  Sherry's  depravity  must  be  attribu- 
ted to  his  intimacy  with  a  man  whom  it  was  a  great  honor  to 
a  youngster  then  to  know,  but  who  would  probably  be  scout- 
ed even  from  a  London  club  in  the  present  day — the  Prince 
of  Wales.  The  part  of  a  courtier  is  always  degrading  enough 
to  play ;  but  to  be  courtier  to  a  prince  whose  favor  was  to  be 
won  by  proficiency  in  vice  and  audacity  in  follies,  to  truckle 
to  his  tastes,  to  pander  to  his  voracious  Justs,  to  win  his  smiles 
by  the  invention  of  a  new  pleasure,  and  his  approbation  by 
the  plotting  of  a  new  villainy,  what  an  office  for  the  author  of 
"  The  School  for  Scandal,"  and  the  orator  renowned  for  de- 
nouncing the  wickednesses  of  Warren  Hastings !  What  a  life 
for  the  young  poet  who  had  wooed  and  won  the  Maid  of  Bath 
— for  the  man  of  strong  domestic  affections,  who  wept  over  his 
father's  sternness,  and  loved  his  son  only  too  well !  It  was  bad 
enough  for  such  mere  worldlings  as  Captain  Hanger  or  Beau 
Brummell,  but  for  a  man  of  higher  and  purer  feelings,  like  Dick 
Sheridan,  who,  with  all  his  faults,  had  some  poetry  in  his  soul, 
such  a  career  was  doubly  disgraceful. 

It  was  at  the  house  of  the  beautiful,  lively,  and  adventurous 

Q 


362  THE  ROYAL  BOON  COMPANION. 

Duchess  of  Devonshire,  the  partisan  of  Charles  James  Fox, 
who  loved  him  or  his  cause — for  Fox  and  Liberalism  were 
often  one  in  ladies'  eyes — so  well,  that  she  could  give  greasy 
Steele,  the  butcher,  a  kiss  for  his  vote,  that  Sheridan  first  met 
the  prince — then  a  boy  in  years,  but  already  more  than  an 
adult  in  vice.  No  doubt  the  youth  whom  Fox,  Brumniell, 
Hanger,  Lord  Surrey,  Sheridan,  the  tailors,  and  the  women 
combined  to  turn  at  once  into  the  finest  gentleman  and  great- 
est blackguard  in  Europe,  was  at  that  time  as  fascinating  in  ap- 
pearance and  manner  as  any  one,  prince  or  not,  could  be.  He 
was  by  far  the  handsomest  of  the  Hanoverians,  and  had  the 
least  amount  of  their  sheepish  look.  He  possessed  all  their 
taste  and  capacity  for  gallantry,  with  none  of  the  German 
coarseness,  which  certain  other  Princes  of  Wales  exhibited  in 
their  amorous  address.  His  coarseness  was  of  a  more  sens- 
ual, but  less  imperious  kind.  He  had  his  redeeming  points, 
which  few  of  his  ancestors  had,  and  his  liberal  hand  and  warm 
heart  won  him  friends,  where  his  conduct  could  win  him  little 
else  than  contempt.  Sheridan  was  introduced  to  him  by  Fox, 
and  Mrs.  Sheridan  by  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire.  The  prince 
had  that  which  always  takes  with  Englishmen — a  readiness  of 
conviviality,  and  a  recklessness  of  character.  He  was  ready  to 
chat,  drink,  and  bet  with  Sheridan,  or  any  new-comer  equally 
well  recommended,  and  an  introduction  to  young  George  was 
always  followed  by  an  easy  recognition.  With  all  this  he 
managed  to  keep  up  a  certain  amount  of  royal  dignity  under 
the  most  trying  circumstances,  but  he  had  none  of  that  easy 
grace  which  made  Charles  II.  beloved  by  his  associates.  When 
the  George  had  gone  too  far,  he  had  no  resource  but  to  cut  the 
individual  with  whom  he  had  hobbed  and  nobbed,  and  he  was 
as  ungrateful  in  his  enmities  as  he  was  ready  with  his  friend- 
ship. Brummell  had  taught  him  to  dress,  and  Sheridan  had 
given  him  wiser  counsels :  he  quarreled  with  both  for  trifles, 
which,  if  he  had  had  real  dignity,  would  never  have  occurred, 
and  if  he  had  had  real  friendship,  would  easily  have  been  over- 
looked. 

Sheridan's  breach  with  the  prince  was  honorable  to  him. 
He  could  not  wholly  approve  of  the  conduct  of  that  personage 
and  his  ministers,  and  he  told  him  openly  that  his  life  was  at 
his  service,  but  his  character  was  the  property  of  the  country. 
The  prince  replied  that  Sheridan  "  might  impeach  his  ministers 
on  the  morrow — that  would  not  impair  their  friendship ;"  yet 
turned  on  his  heel,  and  was  never  his  friend  again.  When, 
again,  the  "  delicate  investigation"  came  off,  he  sent  for  Sheri- 
dan, and  asked  his  aid.  The  latter  replied,  "  Your  royal  high- 
ness honors  me,  but  I  will  never  take  part  against  a  woman, 


STREET   FEOLICS   AT   NIGHT.  363 

whether  she  be  right  or  wrong."  His  political  courage  atones 
somewhat  for  the  want  of  moral  courage  he  displayed  in  pan- 
dering to  the  prince's  vices. 

Many  an  anecdote  is  told  of  Sheridan  and  "  Wales" — many, 
indeed,  that  can  not  be  repeated.  Their  bets  were  often  of 
the  coarsest  nature,  won  by  Sheridan  in  the  coarsest  manner. 
A  great  intimacy  sprang  up  between  the  two  reprobates,  and 
Sherry  became  one  of  the  satellites  of  that  dissolute  prince. 
There  are  few  of  the  stories  of  their  adventures  which  can  be 
told  in  a  work  like  this,  but  we  may  give  one  or  two  specimens 
of  the  less  disgraceful  character : 

The  Prince,  Lord  Surrey,  and  Sheridan  were  in  the  habit 
of  seeking  nightly  adventures  of  any  kind  that  suggested  itself 
to  their  lively  minds.  A  low  tavern,  still  in  existence,  was  the 
rendezvous  of  the  heir  to  the  crown  and  his  noble  and  distin- 
guished associates.  This  was  the  "  Salutation,"  in  Tavistock 
Court,  Covent  Garden,  a  night-house  for  gardeners  and  coun- 
trymen, and  the  sharpers  who  fleeced  both,  and  was  kept  by  a 
certain  Mother  Butler,  who  favored  in  every  way  the  adventur- 
ous designs  of  her  exalted  guests.  Here  wigs,  smock-frocks, 
and  other  disguises  were  in  readiness ;  and  here,  at  call,  was 
to  be  found  a  ready-made  magistrate,  whose  sole  occupation 
was  to  deliver  the  young  Haroun  and  his  companions  from  the 
dilemmas  which  their  adventures  naturally  brought  them  into, 
and  which  were  generally  more  or  less  concerned  with  the 
watch.  Poor  old  watch !  what  happy  days,  when  members 
of  parliament,  noblemen,  and  sucking  monarchs  condescended 
to  break  thy  bob-wigged  head  !  and — blush,  Z  350,  immaculate 
constable — to  toss  thee  a  guinea  to  buy  plaster  with. 

In  addition  to  the  other  disguise,  aliases  were  of  course 
assumed.  The  prince  went  by  the  name  of  Blackstock,  Gray- 
stock  was  my  Lord  Surrey,  and  Thinstock  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan.  The  treatment  of  women  by  the  police  is  tradi- 
tional. The  "unfortunate" — unhappy  creatures! — are  their 
pet  aversion;  and  once  in  their  clutches,  receive  no  mercy. 
The  "  Charley"  of  old  was  quite  as  brutal  as  the  modern  Her- 
cules of  the  glazed  hat,  and  the  three  adventurers  showed  an 
amount  of  zeal  worthy  of  a  nobler  cause,  in  rescuing  the  drunk- 
en Lais  from  his  grasp.  On  one  occasion  they  seem  to  have 
hit  on  a  "  deserving  case ;"  a  slight  skirmish  with  the  watch 
ended  in  a  rescue,  and  the  erring  creature  was  taken  off  to  a 
house  of  respectability  sufficient  to  protect  her.  Here  she 
told  her  tale,  which,  however  improbable,  turned  out  to  be 
true.  It  was  a  very  old,  a  very  simple  one — the  common  his- 
tory of  many  a  frail,  foolish  girl,  cursed  with  beauty,  and  the 
prey  of  a  practiced  seducer.  The  main  peculiarity  lay  in  the 


364  AN    OLD   TALE. 

fact  of  her  respectable  birth,  and  his  position,  she  being  the 
daughter  of  a  solicitor,  he  the  son  of  a  nobleman.  Marriage 
was  promised,  of  course,  as  it  has  been  promised  a  million 
times  with  the  same  intent,  and  for  the  millionth  time  was 
not  performed.  The  seducer  took  her  from  her  home,  kept 
her  quiet  for  a  time,  and  when  the  novelty  was  gone,  abandon- 
ed her.  The  old  story  went  on ;  poverty — a  child — a  mother's 
love  struggling  with  a  sense  of  shame — a  visit  to  her  father's 
house  at  the  last  moment,  as  a  forlorn  hope.  There  she  had 
crawled  on  her  knees  to  one  of  those  relentless  parents  on 
whose  heads  lies  the  utter  loss  of  their  children's  souls.  The 
false  pride,  that  spoke  of  the  blot  on  his  name,  the  disgrace  of 
his  house — when  a  Savior's  example  should  have  bid  him  for- 
give and  raise  the  penitent  in  her  misery  from  the  dust — whis- 
pered him  to  turn  her  from  his  door.  He  ordered  the  footman 
to  put  her  out.  The  man,  a  nobleman  in  plush,  moved  by  his 
young  mistress's  utter  misery,  would  not  obey  though  it  cost 
him  his,,  place,  and  the  harder-hearted  father  himself  thrust  his 
starving  child  into  the  cold  street,  into  the  drizzling  rain,  and 
slammed  the  door  upon  her  cries  of  agony.  The  footman  slip- 
ped out  after  her,  and  five  shillings — a  large  sum  for  him — 
found  its  way  from  his  kind  hand  to  hers.  Now  the  common 
ending  might  have  come ;  now  starvation,  the  slow,  unwilling 
recourse  to  more  shame  and  deeper  vice ;  then  the  forced  hilar- 
ity, the  unreal  smile,  which  in  so  many  of  these  poor  creatures 
hides  a  canker  at  the  heart ;  the  gradual  degradation — lower 
still  and  lower — oblivion  for  a  moment  sought  in  the  bottle — 
a  life  of  sin  and  death  ended  in  a  hospital.  The  will  of  Provi- 
dence turned  the  frolic  of  three  voluptuaries  to  good  account ; 
the  prince  gave  his  purseful,  Sheridan  his  one  last  guinea  for 
her  present  needs ;  the  name  of  the  good-hearted  Plush  was 
discovered,  and  he  was  taken  into  Carlton  House,  where  he 
soon  became  known  as  Roberts,  the  prince's  confidential  serv- 
ant ;  and  Sheridan  bestirred  himself  to  rescue  forever  the  poor 
lady,  whose  beauty  still  remained  as  a  temptation.  He  pro- 
cured her  a  situation,  where  she  studied  for  the  stage,  on  which 
she  eventually  appeared.  "All's  well  that  ends  well;"  her 
secret  was  kept,  till  one  admirer  came  honorably  forward.  To 
him  it  was  confided,  and  he  was  noble  enough  to  forgive  the 
one  false  step  of  youth.  She  was  well  married,  and  the  boy  for 
whom  she  had  suffered  so  much  fell  at  Trafalgar,  a  lieutenant 
in  the  navy. 

To  better  men  such  an  adventure  would  have  been  a  solemn 
warning ;  such  a  tale,  told  by  the  ruined  one  herself,  a  sermon, 
every  word  of  which  would  have  clung  to  their  memories. 
What  effect,  if  any,  it  may  have  had  on  Blackstock  and  his 
companions  must  have  been  very  fleeting. 


THE    FRAY    IN    ST.  GILES'S.  365 

It  is  not  so  very  long  since  the  Seven  Dials  and  St.  Giles's 
were  haunts  of  wickedness  and  dens  of  thieves,  into  which  the 
police  scarcely  dared  to  penetrate.  Probably  their  mysteries 
would  have  afforded  more  amusement  to  the  artist  and  the 
student  of  character  than  to  the  mere  seeker  of  adventure,  but 
it  was  still,  I  remember,  in  my  early  days,  a  great  feat  to  visit 
by  night  one  of  the  noted  "  cribs"  to  which  "  the  profession" 
which  fills  Newgate  was  wont  to  resort.  The  "  Brown  Bear," 
in  Broad  Street,  St.  Giles's,  was  one  of  these  pleasant  haunts, 
and  thither  the  three  adventurers  determined  to  go.  This 
style  of  adventure  is  out  of  date,  and  no  longer  amusing.  Of 
course  a  fight  ensued,  in  which  the  prince  and  his  companions 
showed  immense  pluck  against  terrible  odds,  and  in  which,  as 
one  reads  in  the  novels  of  the  "  London  Journal"  or  "  Family 
Herald,"  the  natural  superiority  of  the  well-born  of  course 
displayed  itself  to  great  advantage.  Surely  Bulwer  has  de- 
scribed such  scenes  too  graphically  in  some  of  his  earlier  nov- 
els to  make  a  minute  description  here  at  all  necessary  ;  but  the 
reader  who  is  curious  in  the  matter  may  be  referred  to  a  work 
which  has  recently  appeared  under  the  title  of  "  Sheridan  and 
his  Times,"  professing  to  be  written  by  an  Octogenarian,  inti- 
mate with  the  hero.  The  fray  ended  with  the  arrival  of  the 
watch,  who  rescued  Blackstock,  Graystock,  and  Thinstock,  and 
with  Dogberryan  stupidity  carried  them  off  to  a  neighboring 
lock-up.  The  examination  which  took  place  was  just  the  oc- 
casion for  Sheridan's  fun  to  display  itself  on,  and  pretending 
to  turn  informer,  he  succeeded  in  bewildering  the  unfortunate 
parochial  constable,  who  conducted  it,  till  the  arrival  of  the 
magistrate,  whose  duty  was  to  deliver  his  friends  from  durance 
vile.  The  whole  scene  is  well  described  in  the  book  just  refer- 
red to,  with,  we  presume,  a  certain  amount  of  idealizing ;  but 
the  "  Octogenarian"  had  probably  heard  the  story  from  Sheri- 
dan himself,  and  the  main  points  must  be  accepted  as  correct. 
The  affair  ended,  as  usual,  with  a  supper  at  the  "  Salutation." 

We  must  now  follow  Sheridan  in  his  gradual  downfall. 

One  of  the  causes  of  this — as  far  as  money  was  concerned — 
was  his  extreme  indolence  and  utter  negligence.  He  trusted 
far  too  much  to  his  ready  wit  and  rapid  genius.  Thus  when 
"  Pizarro"  was  to  appear,  day  after  day  went  by,  and  nothing 
was  done.  On  the  night  of  representation,  only  four  acts  out 
of  five  were  written,  and  even  these  had  not  been  rehearsed, 
the  principal  performers,  Siddons,  Charles  Kemble,  and  Barry- 
more,  having  only  just  received  their  parts.  Sheridan  was  up 
in  the  prompter's  room,  actually  writing  the  fifth  act  while  the 
first  was  being  performed,  and  every  now  and  then  appeared 
in  the  green-room  with  a  fresh  relay  of  dialogue,  and  setting 


366  UNOPENED   LETTEKS.— AN   ODD    INCIDENT. 

all  in  good-humor  by  his  merry  abuse  of  his  own  negligence. 
In  spite  of  this  "  Pizarro"  succeeded.  He  seldom  wrote  ex- 
cept at  night,  and  surrounded  by  a  profusion  of  lights.  Wine 
was  his  great  stimulant  in  composition,  as  it  has  been  to  bet- 
ter and  worse  authors.  "  If  the  thought  is  slow  to  come,"  he 
would  say,  "  a  glass  of  good  wine  encourages  it ;  and  when  it 
does  come,  a  glass  of  good  wine  rewards  it."  Those  glasses  of 
good  wine  were,  unfortunately,  even  more  frequent  than  the 
good  thoughts,  many  and  merry  as  they  were. 

His  neglect  of  letters  was  a  standing  joke  against  him.  He 
never  took  the  trouble  to  open  any  that  he  did  not  expect,  and 
often  left  sealed  many  that  he  was  most  anxious  to  read.  He 
once  appeared  with  his  begging  face  at  the  bank,  humbly  ask- 
ing an  advance  of  twenty  pounds.  "  Certainly,  sir ;  would  you 
like  anymore? — fifty  or  a  hundred?"  said  the  smiling  clerk. 
Sherry  was  overpowered.  He  would  like  a  hundred.  "  Two 
or  three  ?"  asked  the  scribe.  Sherry  thought  he  was  joking, 
but  was  ready  for  two  or  even  three — he  was  always  ready 
for  more.  But  he  could  not  conceal  his  surprise.  "  Have  you 
not  received  our  letter  ?"  the  clerk  ask^d,  perceiving  it.  Cer- 
tainly he  had  received  the  epistle,  which  informed  him  that  his 
salary  as  Receiver  General  of  Cornwall  had  been  paid  in,  but 
he  had  never  opened  it. 

This  neglect  of  letters  once  brought  him  into  a  troublesome 
lawsuit  about  the  theatre.  It  was  necessary  to  pay  certain 
demands,  and  he  had  applied  to  the  Duke  of  Bedford  to  be  his 
security.  The  duke  had  consented,  and  for  a  whole  year  his 
letter  of  consent  remained  unopened.  In  the  mean  time  Sheri- 
dan had  believed  that  the  duke  had  neglected  him,  and  allowed 
the  demands  to  be  brought  into  court. 

In  the  same  way  he  had  long  before  committed  himself  in 
the  affair  with  Captain  Matthews.  In  order  to  give  a  public 
denial  of  certain  reports  circulated  in  Bath,  he  had  called  upon 
an  editor,  requesting  him  to  insert  the  said  reports  in  his  paper, 
in  order  that  he  might  write  him  a  letter  to  refute  them.  The 
editor  at  once  complied,  the  calumny  was  printed  and  publish- 
ed, but  Sheridan  forgot  all  about  his  own  refutation,  which  was 
applied  for  in  vain  till  too  late. 

Other  causes  were  his  extravagance  and  intemperance.  There 
was  an  utter  want  of  even  common  moderation  in  every  thing 
he  did.  Whenever  his  boyish  spirits  suggested  any  freak, 
whenever  a  craving  of  any  kind  possessed  him,  no  matter  what 
the  consequences  here  or  hereafter,  he  rushed  heedlessly  into 
the  indulgence  of  it.  Perhaps  the  enemy  had  never  an  easier 
subject  to  deal  with.  Any  sin  in  which  there  was  a  show  of 
present  mirth,  or  easy  pleasure,  was  as  easily  taken  up  by 


RECKLESS    EXTRAVAGANCE.  367 

Sheridan  as  if  he  had  not  a  single  particle  of  conscience  or  re- 
ligious feeling,  and  yet  we  are  not  at  all  prepared  to  say  that 
he  lacked  either ;  he  had  only  deadened  both  by  excessive  in- 
dulgence of  his  fancies.  The  temptation  of  wealth  and  fame 
had  been  too  much  for  the  poor  and  obscure  young  man  who 
rose  to  them  so  suddenly,  and,  as  so  often  happens,  those  very 
talents  which  should  have  been  his  glory,  were,  in  fact,  his 
ruin. 

His  extravagance  was  unbounded.  At  a  time  when  misfor- 
tune lay  thick  upon  him,  and  bailiffs  were  hourly  expected,  he 
would  invite  a  large  party  to  a  dinner,  which  a  prince  might 
have  given,  and  to  which  one  prince  sometimes  sat  down.  On 
one  occasion,  having  no  plate  left  from  the  pawnbroker's,  he 
had  to  prevail  on  "my  uncle"  to  lend  him  some  for  a  ban- 
quet he  was  to  give.  The  spoons  and  forks  were  sent,  and 
with  them  two  of  his  men,  who,  dressed  in  livery,  waited,  no 
doubt  with  the  most  vigilant  attention,  on  the  party.  Such  at 
that  period  was  the  host's  reputation,  when  he  could  not  even 
be  trusted  not  to  pledge  another  man's  property.  At  one 
time  his  income  was  reckoned  at  £15,000  a  year,  when  the 
theatre  was  prosperous.  Of  this  he  is  said  to  have  spent  not 
more  than  £5000  on  his  household,  while  the  balance  went  to 
pay  for  his  former  follies,  debts,  and  the  interest,  lawsuits  often 
arising  from  mere  carelessness  and  judgments  against  the  the- 
atre !  Probably  a  great  deal  of  it  was  betted  away,  drunk 
away,  thrown  away  in  one  way  or  another.  As  for  betting, 
he  generally  lost  all  the  wagers  he  made :  as  he  said  himself — 
"I  never  made  a  bet  upon  my  own  judgment  that  I  did  not 
lose ;  and  I  never  won  but  one,  which  I  had  made  against  my 
judgment."  His  bets  were  generally  laid  in  hundreds;  and 
though  he  did  not  gamble,  he  could  of  course  run  through  a 
good  deal  of  money  in  this  way.  He  betted  on  every  possible 
trifle,  but  chiefly,  it  would  seem,  on  political  possibilities ;  the 
state  of  the  funds,  the  result  of  an  election,  or  the  downfall  of 
a  ministry.  Horse-races  do  not  seem  to  have  possessed  any 
interest  for  him,  and,  in  fact,  he  scarcely  knew  one  kind  of  horse 
from  another.  He  was  never  an  adept  at  field-sports,  though 
very  ambitious  of  being  thought  a  sportsman.  Once,  when 
staying  in  the  country,  he  went  out  with  a  friend's  game- 
keeper to  shoot  pheasants,  and  after  wasting  a  vast  amount 
of  powder  and  shot  upon  the  air,  he  was  only  rescued  from 
ignominy  by  the  sagacity  of  his  companion,  who,  going  a  little 
behind  him  when  a  bird  rose,  brought  it  down  so  neatly  that 
Sheridan,  believing  he  had  killed  it  himself,  snatched  it  up,  and 
rushed  bellowing  with  glee  back  to  the  house  to  show  that  he 
could  shoot.  In  the  same  way,  he  tried  his  hand  at  fishing  in 


3()»  LIKE   FATHER,  LIKE   SON. 

a  wretched  little  stream  behind  the  Deanery  at  Winchester, 
using,  however,  a  net,  as  easier  to  handle  than  a  rod.  Some 
boys,  who  had  watched  his  want  of  success  a  long  time,  at  last 
bought  a  few  pennyworth  of  pickled  herrings,  and  throwing 
them  on  the  stream,  allowed  them  to  float  down  toward  the 
eager  disciple  of  old  Izaak.  Sheridan  saw  them  coming,  rushed 
in  regardless  of  his  clothes,  cast  his  net,  and  in  great  triumph 
secured  them.  When  he  had  landed  his  prize,  however,  there 
were  the  boys  bursting  with  laughter,  and  Piscator  saw  he  was 
their  dupe.  "Ah !"  cried  he,  laughing  in  concert,  as  he  looked 
at  his  dripping  clothes,  "  this  is  a  pretty  pickle  indeed !" 

His  extravagance  was  well  known  to  his  friends,  as  well  as 
to  his  creditors.  Lord  Guildford  met  him  one  day.  "  Well, 
Sherry,  so  you've  taken  a  new  house,  I  hear."  "Yes,  and 
you'll  see  now  that  every  thing  will  go  on  like  clock-work." 
"Ay,"  said  my  lord,  with  a  knowing  leer,  "tick,  tick"  Even 
his  son  Tom^used  to  laugh  at  him  for  it.  "Tom,  if  you  marry 
that  girl,  I'll  cut  you  off  with  a  shilling."  "  Then  you  must 
borrow  it,"  replied  the  ingenious  youth.*  Tom  sometimes  dis- 
concerted his  father  with  his  inherited  wit — his  only  inherit- 
ance. He  pressed  urgently  for  money  on  one,  as  on  many  an 
occasion.  "  I  have  none,"  was  the  reply,  as  usual ;  "  there  is  a 
pair  of  pistols  up  stairs,  a  horse  in  the  stable,  the  night  is  dark, 
and  Hounslow  Heath  at  hand." 

"  I  understand  what  you  mean,"  replied  young  Tom ;  "  but 
I  tried  that  last  night,  and  unluckily  stopped  your  treasurer, 
Peake,  who  told  me  you  had  been  beforehand  with  him,  and 
robbed  him  of  every  sixpence  he  had  in  the  world." 

So  much  for  the  respect  of  son  to  father ! 

Papa  had  his  revenge  of  the  young  wit  he  had  begotten, 
when  Tom,  talking  of  Parliament,  announced  his  intention  of 
entering  it  on  an  independent  basis,  ready  to  be  bought  by 
the  highest  bidder.  "  I  shall  write  on  my  forehead,"  said  he, 
"'To  let.'" 

"  And  under  that,  Tom,  'Unfurnished,' "  rejoined  Sherry  the 
elder.  The  joke  is  now  stale  enough. 

But  Sheridan  was  more  truly  witty  in  putting  down  a  young 
braggart  whom  he  met  at  dinner  at  a  country  house.  There 
are  still  to  be  found,  like  the  bones  of  dead  asses  in  a  field 
newly  plowed,  in  some  parts  of  the  country,  youths,  who  are 
so  hopelessly  behind  their  age,  and  indeed  every  age,  as  to 
look  upon  authorship  as  degrading,  all  knowledge,  save  Latin 
and  Greek,  as  "  a  bore,"  and  all  entertainment  but  hunting, 
shooting,  fishing,  and  badger-drawing,  as  unworthy  of  a  man. 

*  Another  version  is  that  Tom  replied — "You  don't  happen  to  have  it 
about  you,  sir,  do  you  ?" 


A   SEVERE   AND   WITTY   KEBTJKE.  369 

In  the  last  century  these  young  animals,  who  unite  the  mod- 
esty of  the  puppy  with  the  clear-sightedness  of  the  pig,  not  to 
mention  the  progressiveness  of  another  quadruped,  were  more 
numerous  than  in  the  present  day,  and  in  consequence  more 
forward  in  their  remarks.  It  was  one  of  these  charming 
youths,  who  was  staying  in  the  same  house  as  Sheridan,  and 
who,  quite  unprovoked,  began  at  dinner  to  talk  of  "  actors  and 
authors,  and  those  low  sort  of  people,  you  know."  Sherry  said 
naught,  but  patiently  bided  his  time.  The  next  day  there  was 
a  large  dinner-party,  and  Sheridan  and  the  youth  happened  to 
sit  opposite  to  one  another  in  the  most  conspicuous  part  of  the 
table.  Young  Nimrod  was  kindly  obliging  his  side  of  the 
table  with  the  extraordinary  leaps  of  his  hunter,  the  perfect 
working  of  his  new  double-barreled  Manton,  etc.,  bringing  of 
course  number  one  in  as  the  hero  in  each  case.  In  a  moment 
of  silence,  Sheridan,  with  an  air  of  great  politeness,  addressed 
his  unhappy  victim.  "  He  had  not,"  he  said,  "  been  able  to 
catch  the  whole  of  the  very  interesting  account  he  had  heard 

Mr. relating."     All  eyes  were  turned  upon  the  two. 

"  Would  Mr. permit  him  to  ask  who  it  was  who  made 

the  extraordinary  leap  he  had  mentioned  ?"  "  I,  sir,"  replied 
the  youth,  with  some  pride.  "Then  who  was  it  killed  the 
wild  duck  at  that  distance  ?"  "  I,  sir."  "  Was  it  your  setter 
who  behaved  so  well  ?"  "  Yes,  mine,  sir,"  getting  rather  red- 
over  this  examination.  "  And  who  caught  the  huge  salmon  so 
neatly  ?"  "  I,  sir."  And  so  the  questioning  went  on  through 
a  dozen  more  items,  till  the  young  man,  weary  of  answering 
"  I,  sir,"  and  growing  redder  and  redder  every  moment,  would 
gladly  have  hid  his  head  under  the  table-cloth,  in  spite  of  his 
sporting  prowess.  But  Sheridan  had  to  give  him  the  coup  de 
grace. 

"  So,  sir,"  said  he,  very  politely,  "  you  were  the  chief  actor 
in  every  anecdote,  and  the  author  of  them  all ;  surely  it  is  im- 
politic to  despise  your  own  professions." 

Sheridan's  intemperance  was  as  great  and  as  incurable  as 
his  extravagance,  and  we  think  his  mind,  if  not  his  body,  lived 
only  on  stimulants.  He  could  neither  write  nor  speak  with- 
out them.  One  day,  before  one  of  his  finest  speeches  in  the 
House,  he  was  seen  to  enter  a  coffee-house,  call  for  a  pint  of 
brandy,  and  swallow  it  "  neat,"  and  almost  at  one  gulp.  His 
friends  occasionally  interfered.  This  drinking,  they  told  him, 
would  destroy  the  coat  of  his  stomach.  "Then  my  stomach 
must  digest  in  its  waistcoat,"  laughed  Sherry. 

Where  are  the  topers  of  yore  ?  Jovial  I  will  not  call  them, 
for  every  one  knows  that 

"Mirth  and  laughter," 
Q2 


370  CONVIVIAL   EXCESSES    OF   A   PAST   DAY. 

worked  up  with  a  cork-screw,  are  followed  by 

"Headaches  and  hot  coppers  the  day  after." 

But  where  are  those  Anakim  of  the  bottle,  who  could  floor 
their  two  of  port  and  one  of  Madeira,  though  the  said  two  and 
one  floored  them  in  turn  ?  The  race,  I  believe,  has  died  out. 
Our  heads  have  got  weaker,  as  our  cellars  grew  emptier.  The 
arrangement  was  convenient.  The  daughters  of  Eve  have 
nobly  undertaken  to  atone  for  the  naughty  conduct  of  their 
primeval  mamma,  by  reclaiming  men,  and  dragging  them  from 
the  Hades  of  the  mahogany  to  that  seventh  heaven  of  muflins 
and  English  ballads  prepared  for  them  in  the  drawing-room. 

We  are  certainly  astounded,  even  to  incredulity,  when  we 
read  of  the  deeds  of  a  David  or  a  Samson ;  but  such  wonder- 
ment can  be  nothing  compared  to  that  which  a  generation  or 
two  hence  will  feel,  when  sipping,  as  a  great  extravagance  and 
unpardonable  luxury,  two  thimblefuls  of  "  African  Sherry,"  the 
young  demirep  of  the  day  reads  that  three  English  gentlemen, 
Sheridan,  Richardson,  and  Ward,  sat  down  one  day  to  dinner, 
and  before  they  rose  again — if  they  ever  rose,  which  seems 
doubtful — or,  at  least,  were  raised,  had  emptied  five  bottles  of 
port,  two  of  Madeira,  and  one  of  brandy  !  Yet  this  was  but 
one  instance  in  a  thousand ;  there  was  nothing  extraordinary 
in  it,  and  it  is  only  mentioned  because  the  amount  drunk  is 
accurately  given  by  the  unhappy  owner  of  the  wine,  Kelly,  the 
composer,  who  unfortunately,  or  fortunately,  was  not  present, 
and  did  not  even  imagine  that  the  three  honorable  gentlemen 
were  discussing  his  little  store.  Yet  Sherry  does  not  seem  to 
have  believed  much  in  his  friend's  vintages,  for  he  advised  him 
to  alter  his  brass  plate  to  "  Michael  Kelly,  Composer  of  Wine 
and  Importer  of  Music."  He  made  a  better  joke,  when,  din- 
ing with  Lord  Thurlow,  he  tried  in  vain  to  induce  him  to  pro- 
duce a  second  bottle  of  some  extremely  choice  Constantia  from 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  "  Ah,"  he  muttered  to  his  neighbor, 
"  pass  me  that  decanter,  if  you  please,  for  I  must  return  to  Ma- 
deira, as  I  see  I  can  not  double  the  Cape" 

But  as  long  as  Richard  Brinsley  was  a  leader  of  political 
and  fashionable  circles,  as  long  as  he  had  a  position  to  keep 
up,  an  ambition  to  satisfy,  a  labor  to  complete,  his  drinking 
was,  if  not  moderate,  not  extraordinary  for  his  time  and  his 
associates.  But  "when  a  man's  ambition  is  limited  to  mere 
success — when  fame  and  a  flash  for  himself  are  all  he  cares  for, 
and  there  is  no  truer,  grander  motive  for  his  sustaining  the 
position  he  has  climbed  to — when,  in  short,  it  is  his  own  glory, 
not  mankind's  good,  he  has  ever  striven  for — woe,  woe,  woe 
when  the  hour  of  success  is  come !  I  can  not  stop  to  name 


BITTER   PANGS. THE   SCYTHE    OF    DEATH.  371 

and  examine  instances,  but  let  me  be  allowed  to"  refer  to  that 
bugbear  who  is  called  up  whenever  greatness  of  any  kind  has 
to  be  illustrated — Napoleon  the  Great ;  or  let  me  take  any  of 
the  lesser  Napoleons  in  lesser  grades  in  any  nation,  any  age — 
the  men  who  have  had  no  star  but  self  and  self-glory  before1, 
them — and  let  me  ask  if  any  one  can  be  named  who,  if  he  has 
survived  the  attainment  of  his  ambition,  has  not  gone  down 
the  other  side  of  the  hill  somewhat  faster  than  he  came  up  it  ? 
Then  let  me  select  men  whose  guiding-star  has  been  the  good 
of  their  fellow-creatures,  or  the  glory  of  God,  and  watch  then* 
peaceful  useful  end  on  that  calm  summit  that  they  toiled  so 
honestly  to  reach.  The  difference  comes  home  to  us.  The 
moral  is  read  only  at  the  end  of  the  story.  Remorse  rings  it 
forever  in  the  ears  of  the  dying — often  too  long  a-dying — man 
who  has  labored  for  himself.  Peace  reads  it  smilingly  to  him 
whose  generous  toil  for  others  has  brought  its  own  reward. 

Sheridan  had  climbed  with  the  stride  of  a  giant,  laughing  at 
rocks,  at  precipices,  at  slippery  water-courses.  He  had  spread 
the  wings  of  genius  to  poise  himself  withal,  and  gained  one 
peak  after  another,  while  homelier  worth  was  struggling  mid- 
way, clutching  the  brambles  and  clinging  to  the  ferns.  He 
had,  as  Byron  said  in  Sherry's  days  of  decay,  done  the  best  in 
all  he  undertook,  written  the  best  comedy,  best  opera,  best 
farce ;  spoken  the  best  parody,  and  made  the  best  speech. 
Sheridan,  when  those  words  of  the  young  poet  were  told  him, 
shed  tears.  Perhaps  the  bitter  thought  struck  him,  that  he 
had  not  led  the  best,  but  the  worst  life ;  that  comedy,  farce, 
opera,  monody,  and  oration  were  nothing,  nothing  to  a  pure 
conscience  and  a  peaceful  old  age ;  that  they  could  not  save 
him  from  shame  and  poverty — from  debt,  disgrace,  drunken- 
ness— from  grasping,  but  long-cheated  creditors,  who  dragged 
his  bed  from  under  the  feeble,  nervous,  ruined  old  man.  Poor 
Sherry !  his  end  was  too  bitter  for  us  to  cast  one  stone  more 
upon  him.  Let  it  be  noted  that  it  was  in  the  beginning  of  his 
decline,  when,  having  reached  the  climax  of  all  his  ambition 
and  completed  his  fame  as  a  dramatist,  orator,  and  wit,  that 
the  hand  of  Providence  mercifully  interposed  to  rescue  this 
reckless  man  from  his  downfall.  It  smote  him  with  that  com- 
mon but  powerful  weapon — death.  Those  he  best  loved  were 
torn  from  him,  one  after  another,  rapidly,  and  with  little  warn- 
ing. The  Linleys,  the  "  nest  of  nightingales,"  were  all  delicate 
as  nightingales  should  be ;  and  it  seemed  as  if  this  very  time 
was  chosen  for  their  deaths,  that  the  one  erring  soul — more 
precious,  remember,  than  many  just  lives  —  might  be  called 
back.  Almost  within  one  year  he  lost  his  dear  sister-in-law, 
the  wife  of  his  most  intimate  friend  Tickell ;  Maria  Linley,  the 


372  THE   FAIR,  LOVING,  NEGLECTED    WIFE. 

last  of  the  family ;  his  own  wife,  and  his  little  daughter.  One 
grief  succeeded  another  so  rapidly  that  Sheridan  was  utterly 
unnerved,  utterly  brought  low  by  them  ;  but  it  was  his  wife's 
death  that  told  most  upon  him.  With  that  wife  he  had  al- 
ways been  the  lover  rather  than  the  husband.  She  had  mar- 
ried him  in  the  days  of  his  poverty,  when  her  beauty  was  so 
celebrated  that  she  might  have  wed  whom  she  would.  She 
had  risen  with  him  and  shared  his  later  anxieties.  Yet  she 
had  seen  him  forget,  neglect  her,  and  seek  other  society.  In 
spite  of  his  tender  affection  for  her  and  for  his  children,  he  had 
never  made  a  home  of  their  home.  Vanity  Fair  had  kept  him 
ever  flitting,  and  it  is  little  to  be  wondered  at  that  Mrs.  Sheri- 
dan was  sometimes  tempted  to  fill  up  his  place  from  among 
her  many  admirers.*  Yet,  in  spite  of  calumny,  she  died  with 
a  fair  fame.  Decline  had  long  pressed  upon  her,  yet  her  last 
illness  was  too  brief.  In  1792  she  was  taken  away,  still  in  the 
summer  of  her  days,  and  with  her  last  breath  uttering  her  love 
for  the  man  who  had  deserted  her.  His  grief  was  terrible ; 
yet  it  passed,  and  wrought  no  change.  He  found  solace  in  his 
beloved  son,  and  yet  more  beloved  daughter.  A  few  months 
— and  the  little  girl  followed  her  mother.  Again  his  grief 
was  terrible :  again  passed  and  wrought  no  change.  Yes,  it 
did  work  some  change,  but  not  for  the  better :  it  drove  him  to 
the  goblet ;  and  from  that  time  we  may  date  the  confirmation 
of  his  habit  of  drinking.  The  solemn  warnings  had  been  un- 
heeded :  they  were  to  be  repeated  by  a  long-suffering  God  in 
a  yet  more  solemn  manner,  which  should  touch  him  yet  more 
nearly.  His  beautiful  wife  had  been  the  one  restraint  upon 
his  folly  and  his  lavishness.  Now  she  was  gone,  they  burst 
out  afresh,  wilder  than  ever. 

For  a  while  after  these  afflictions,  which  were  soon  com- 
pleted in  the  death  of  his  most  intimate  friend  and  boyish 
companion,  Tickell,  Sheridan  threw  himself  again  into  the 
commotion  of  the  political  world.  But  in  this  we  shall  not 
follow  him.  Three  years  after  the  death  of  his  first  wife  he 
married  again.  He  was  again  fortunate  in  his  choice.  Though 
now  forty-four,  he  succeeded  in  winning  the  heart  of  a  most 
estimable  and  charming  young  lady  with  a  fortune  of  £5000. 
She  must  indeed  have  loved  or  admired  the  widower  very 
much  to  consent  to  be  the  wife  of  a  man  so  notoriously  irreg- 
ular, to  use  a  mild  term,  in  his  life.  But  Sheridan  fascinated 
wherever  he  went,  and  young  ladies  like  "  a  little  wildness." 
His  heart  was  always  good,  and  where  he  gave  it  he  gave  it 
warmly,  richly,  fully.  His  second  wife  was  Miss  Esther  Jane 

*  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald  was  one  of  the  most  devoted  of  these :  he  chose 
his  wife,  Pamela,  because  she  resembled  Mrs.  Sheridan. 


DEBTS    OF   HONOR.  373 

Ogle,  daughter  of  the  Dean  of  Winchester.  She  was  given  to 
him  on  condition  of  his  settling  in  all  £20,000  upon  her — a 
wise  proviso  with  such  a  spendthrift — and  he  had  to  raise  the 
money,  as  usual. 

His  political  career  was  sufficiently  brilliant,  though  his  real 
fame  as  a  speaker  rests  on  his  great  oration  at  Hastings's  trial. 
In  1806  he  satisfied  another  point  of  his  ambition,  long  de- 
sired, and  was  elected  for  the  city  of  Westminster,  which  he 
had  ardently  coveted  when  Fox  represented  it.  But  a  disso- 
lution threw  him  again  on  the  mercy  of  the  popular  party ; 
and  again  he  offered  himself  for  Westminster ;  but,  in  spite  of 
all  the  efforts  made  for  him,  without  success.  He  was  return- 
ed, instead,  for  Ilchester. 

Meanwhile  his  difficulties  increased ;  extravagance,  debt, 
want  of  energy  to  meet  both,  brought  him  speedily  into  that 
position  when  a  man  accepts  without  hesitation  the  slightest 
offer  of  aid.  The  man  who  had  had  an  income  of  £15,000  a 
year,  and  settled  £20,000  on  his  wife,  allowed  a  poor  friend  to 
pay  a  bill  for  £5  for  him,  and  clutched  eagerly  at  a  £50  note 
when  displayed  to  him  by  another.  Extravagance  is  the  fa- 
ther of  meanness,  and  Sheridan  was  often  mean  in  the  readi- 
ness with  which  he  accepted  offers,  and  the  anxiety  with  which 
he  implored  assistance.  It  is  amusing  in  the  present  day  to 
hear  a  man  talk  of  "  a  debt  of  honor,"  as  if  all  debts  did  not 
demand  honor  to  pay  them — as  if  all  debts  incurred  without 
hope  of  repayment  were  not  dishonorable.  A  story  is  told 
relative  to  the  old-fashioned  idea  of  "  a  debt  of  honor."  A 
tradesman,  to  whom  he  had  given  a  bill  for  £200,  called  on 
him  for  the  amount.  A  heap  of  gold  was  lying  on  the  table. 
"  Don't  look  that  way,"  cried  Sheridan,  after  protesting  that 
he  had  not  a  penny  in  the  world,  "that  is  to  pay  a  debt  of 
honor."  The  applicant,  with  some  wit,  tore  up  the  bill  he 
held.  "  Now,  Mr.  Sheridan,"  quoth  he,  "  mine  is  a  debt  of 
honor  too."  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  Sherry  handed  him  the 
money. 

The  story  of  Gunter's  bill  is  not  so  much  to  his  credit. 
Hanson,  an  iron-monger,  called  upon  him  and  pressed  for  pay- 
ment. A  bill  sent  in  by  the  famous  confectioner  was  lying  on 
the  table.  A  thought  struck  the  debtor,  who  had  no  means 
of  getting  rid  of  his  importunate  applicant.  "You  know 
Gunter?"  he  asked.  "  One  of  the  safest  men  in  London,"  re- 
plied the  iron-monger.  "Then  will  you  be  satisfied  if  I  give 
you  his  bill  for  the  amount  ?"  "  Certainly."  Thereupon  Sher- 
ry handed  him  the  neatly-folded  account  and  rushed  from  the 
room,  leaving  the  creditor  to  discover  the  point  of  Mr.  Sheri- 
dan's little  fun. 


374          DRURY   LANE   BURNT. — THE    OWNER'S    SERENITY. 

Still  Sheridan  might  have  weathered  through  the  storm. 
Drury  Lane  was  a  mine  of  wealth  to  him,  and  with  a  little 
care  might  have  been  really  profitable.  The  lawsuits,  the 
debts,  the  engagements  upon  it,  all  rose  from  his  negligence 
and  extravagance.  But  Old  Drury  was  doomed.  On  the  24th 
of  February,  1809,  soon  after  the  conclusion  of  the  perform- 
ances, it  was  announced  to  be  in  flames.  Rather  it  announced 
itself.  In  a  few  moments  it  was  blazing — a  royal  bonfire. 
Sheridan  was  in  the  House  of  Commons  at  the  time.  The 
reddened  clouds  above  London  threw  the  glare  back  even  to 
the  windows  of  the  House.  The  members  rushed  from  their 
seats  to  see  the  unwonted  light,  and  in  consideration  for  Sheri- 
dan, an  adjournment  was  moved.  But  he  rose  calmly,  though 
sadly,  and  begged  that  no  misfortune  of  his  should  interrupt 
the  public  business.  His  independence,  he  said — witty  in  the 
midst  of  his  troubles — had  often  been  questioned,  but  was  now 
confirmed,  for  he  had  nothing  more  to  depend  upon.  He  then 
left  the  House,  and  repaired  to  the  scene  of  conflagration. 

Not  long  after,  Kelly  found  him  sitting  quite  composed  in 
"  The  Bedford,"  sipping  his  wine,  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 
The  musician  expressed  his  astonishment  at  Mr.  Sheridan's 
sang  froid.  "  Surely,"  replied  the  wit,  "  you'll  admit  that  a 
man  has  a  right  to  take  his  wine  by  his  own  fireside."  But 
Sherry  was  only  drowning  care,  not  disregarding  it.  The 
event  was  really  too  much  for  him,  though  perhaps  he  did  not 
realize  the  extent  of  its  eflect  at  the  time.  In  a  word,  all  he 
had  in  the  world  went  with  the  theatre.  Nothing  was  left 
either  for  him  or  the  principal  shareholders.  Yet  he  bore  it 
all  with  fortitude,  till  he  heard  that  the  harpsichord,  on  which 
his  first  wife  was  wont  to  play,  was  gone  too.  Then  he  burst 
into  tears. 

This  fire  was  the  opening  of  the  shaft  down  which  the  great 
man  sank  rapidly.  While  his  fortunes  kept  up,  his  spirits 
were  not  completely  exhausted.  He  drank  much,  but  as  an 
indulgence  rather  than  as  a  relief.  Now  it  was  by  wine  alone 
that  he  could  even  raise  himself  to  the  common  requirements 
of  conversation.  He  is  described,  before  dinner,  as  depressed, 
nervous,  and  dull ;  after  dinner  only  did  the  old  fire  break  out, 
the  old  wit  blaze  up,  and  Dick  Sheridan  was  Dick  Sheridan 
once  more.  He  was,  in  fact,  fearfully  oppressed  by  the  long- 
accumulated  and  never-to-be-wiped-off  debts,  for  which  he  was 
now  daily  pressed.  In  quitting  Parliament  he  resigned  his 
sanctuary,  and  left  himself  an  easy  prey  to  the  Jews  and  Gen- 
tiles, whom  he  had  so  long  dodged  and  deluded  with  his  ready 
ingenuity.  Drury  Lane,  as  we  all  know,  was  rebuilt,  and  the 
birth  of  the  new  house  heralded  with  a  prologue  by  Byron, 


THE    WHITBKEAD    QUARREL.  375 

about  as  good  as  the  one  in  "Rejected  Addresses,"  the  clever- 
est parodies  ever  written,  and  suggested  by  this  very  occasion. 
The  building-committee  having  advertised  for  a  prize  prologue, 
Samuel  Whitbread  sent  in  his  own  attempt,  in  which,  as  prob- 
ably in  a  hundred  others,  the  new  theatre  was  compared  to  a 
Phoenix  rising  out  of  the  ashes  of  the  old  one.  Sheridan  said 
Wlritbread's  description  of  a  Phoenix  was  excellent,  for  it  was 
quite  a  poulterer's  description. 

This  same  Sam  Whitbread  was  now  to  figure  conspicuous- 
ly in  the  life  of  Mr.  Richard  B.  Sheridan.  The  ex-proprietor 
was  found  to  have  an  interest  in  the  theatre  to  the  amount  of 
£150,000 — not  a  trifle  to  be  sneezed  at;  but  he  was  now  past 
sixty,  and  it  need  excite  no  astonishment  that,  even  with  all 
his  liabilities,  he  was  unwilling  to  begin  again  the  cares  of 
.management,  or  mismanagement,  which  he  had  endured  so 
many  years.  He  sold  his  interest,  in  which  his  son  Tom  was 
joined,  for  £60,000.  This  sum  would  have  cleared  off  his 
debts  and  left  him  a  balance  sufficient  to  secure  comfort  for 
his  old  age.  But  it  was  out  of  the  question  that  any  money 
matters  should  go  right  with  Dick  Sheridan.  Of  the  rights 
and  wrongs  of  the  quarrel  between  him  and  Whitbread,  who 
was  chairman  of  the  committee  for  building  the  new  theatre, 
I  do  not  pretend  to  form  an  opinion.  Sheridan  was  not  nat- 
urally mean,  though  he  descended  to  meanness  when  hard 
pressed — what  man  of  his  stamp  does  not  ?  Whitbread  was 
truly  friendly  to  him  for  a  time.  Sherry  was  always  complain- 
ing that  he  was  sued  for  debts  he  did  not  owe,  and  kept  out 
of  many  that  were  due  to  him.  Whitbread  knew  his  man 
well,  and  if  he  withheld  what  was  owing  to  him,  may  be  ex- 
cused on  the  ground  of  real  friendship.  All  I  know  is,  that 
Sheridan  and  Whitbread  quarreled ;  that  the  former  did  not, 
or  affirmed  that  he  did  not,  receive  the  full  amount  of  his  claim 
on  the  property,  and  that,  when  what  he  had  received  was 
paid  over  to  his  principal  creditors,  there  was  little  or  nothing 
left  for  my  lord  to  spend  in  banquets  to  parliamentary  friends 
and  jorams  of  brandy  in  small  coffee-houses. 

Because  a  man  is  a  genius,  he  is  not  of  necessity  an  upright, 
honest,  ill-used,  oppressed,  and  cruelly-entreated  man.  Genius 
plays  the  fool  wittingly,  and  often  enough  quite  knowingly, 
with  its  own  interests.  It  is  its  privilege  to  do  so,  and  no  one 
has  a  right  to  complain.  But  then  Genius  ought  to  hold  its 
tongue,  and  not  make  itself  out  a  martyr,  when  it  has  had  the 
dubious  glory  of  defying  common  sense.  If  Genius  despises 
gold,  well  and  good,  but  when  he  has  spurned  it,  he  should  not 
whine  out  that  he  is  wrongfully  kept  from  it.  Poor  Sherry 
may  or  may  not  have  been  right  in  the  Whitbread  quarrel ; 


376  RUINED ! 

he  has  had  his  defenders,  and  I  am  not  anxious  of  being  num- 
bered among  them ;  but  whatever  were  now  his  troubles  were 
brought  on  by  his  own  disregard  of  all  that  was  right  and 
beautiful  in  conduct.  If  he  went  down  to  the  grave  a  pauper 
and  a  debtor,  he  had  made  his  own  bed,  and  in  it  he  was  to 
lie. 

Lie  he  did,  wretchedly,  on  the  most  unhappy  bed  that  old 
age  ever  lay  in.  There  is  little  more  of  importance  to  chroni- 
cle of  his  latter  days.  The  retribution  came  on  slowly  but 
terribly.  The  career  of  a  ruined  man  is  not  a  pleasant  topic 
to  dwell  upon,  and  I  leave  Sheridan's  misery  for  Mr.  J.  B. 
Gough  to  whine  and  roar  over  when  he  wants  a  shocking  ex- 
ample. Sherry  might  have  earned  many  a  crown  in  that  ca- 
pacity, if  temperance  oratory  had  been  the  passion  of  the  day. 
Debt,  disease,  depravity — these  words  describe  enough  the 
downward  career  of  his  old  age.  To  eat,  still  more  to  drink, 
was  now  the  troublesome  enigma  of  the  quondam  genius.  I 
say  quondam,  for  all  the  marks  of  that  genius  were  now  gone. 
One  after  another  his  choicest  properties  made  their  way  to 
"  my  uncle's."  The  books  went  first,  as  if  they  could  be  most 
easily  dispensed  with;  the  remnants  of  his  plate  followed; 
then  his  pictures  were  sold ;  and  at  last  even  the  portrait  of 
his  first  wife,  by  Reynolds,  was  left  in  pledge  for  a  "  farther 
remittance." 

The  last  humiliation  arrived  in  time,  and  the  associate  of  a 
prince,  the  eloquent  organ  of  a  party,  the  man  who  had  enjoy- 
ed £15,000  a  year,  was  carried  off  to  a  low  sponging-house. 
His  pride  forsook  him  in  that  dismal  and  disgusting  imprison- 
ment, and  he  wrote  to  Whitbread  a  letter  which  his  defenders 
ought  not  to  have  published.  He  had  his  friends — stanch 
ones  too — and  they  aided  him.  Peter  Moore,  iron-monger,  and 
even  Canning,  lent  him  money  and  released  him  from  time  to 
time.  For  six  years  after  the  burning  of  the  old  theatre  he 
continued  to  go  down  and  down.  Disease  now  attacked  him 
fiercely.  In  the  spring  of  1816  he  was  fast  waning  toward  ex- 
tinction. His  day  was  past ;  he  had  outlived  his  fame  as  a 
wit  and  social  light ;  he  was  forgotten  by  many,  if  not  by 
most,  of  his  old  associates.  He  wrote  to  Rogers,  "  I  am  abso- 
lutely undone  and  broken-hearted."  Poor  Sherry!  in  spite 
of  all  thy  faults,  who  is  he  whose  morality  is  so  stern  that  he 
can  not  shed  one  tear  over  thy  latter  days !  God  forgive  us, 
we  are  all  sinners ;  and  if  we  weep  not  for  this  man's  deficien- 
cy, how  shall  we  ask  tears  when  our  day  comes  ?  Even  as  I 
write  I  feel  my  hand  tremble  and  my  eyes  moisten  over  the 
sad  end  of  one  whom  I  love,  though  he  died  before  I  was  born. 
"  They  are  going  to  put  the  carpets  out  of  window,"  he  wrote 


THE    DEAD    MAN    ARRESTED.  377 

to  Rogers,  "  and  break  into  Mrs.  S.'s  room  and  take  me.  For 
God's  sake  let  me  see  you !"  See  him ! — see  one  friend  who 
could  and  would  help  him  in  his  misery !  Oh !  happy  may 
that  man  count  himself  who  has  never  wanted  that  one  friend, 
and  felt  the  utter  helplessness  of  that  want !  Poor  Sherry ! 
had  he  ever  asked,  or  hoped,  or  looked  for  that  Friend  out  of 
this  world  it  had  been  better;  for  "the  Lord  thy  God  is  a 
jealous  God,"  and  we  go  on  seeking  human  friendship  and 
neglecting  the  divine  till  it  is  too  late.  He  found  one  hearty 
friend  in  his  physician,  Dr.  Bain,  when  all  others  had  forsaken 
him.  The  spirit  of  White's  and  Brookes's,  the  companion  of 
a  prince  and  a  score  of  noblemen,  the  enlivener  of  every  "fash- 
ionable" table,  was  forgotten  by  all  but  this  one  doctor.  Let 
us  read  Moore's  description :  "  A  sheriff's  officer  at  length  ar- 
rested the  dying  man  in  his  bed^  and  was  about  to  carry  him 
off,  in  his  blankets,  to  a  sponging-house,  when  Dr.  Bain  inter- 
fered." Who  would  live  the  life  of  revelry  that  Sheridan 
lived  to  have  such  an  end  ?  A  few  days  after,  on  the  7th  of 
July,  1816,  in  his  sixty-fifth  year,  he  died. 

Peace !  there  was  not  peace  even  in  death,  and  the  creditor 
pursued  him  even  into  the  "waste  wide" — even  to  the  coffin. 
He  was  lying  in  state,  when  a  gentleman  in  the  deepest  mourn- 
ing called,  it  is  said,  at  the  house,  and  introducing  himself  as 
an  old  and  much  attached  friend  of  the  deceased,  begged  to 
be  allowed  to  look  upon  his  face.  The  tears  which  rose  in  his 
eyes,  the  tremulousness  of  his  quiet  voice,  the  pallor  of  his 
mournful  face,  deceived  the  unsuspecting  servant,  who  accom- 
panied him  to  the  chamber  of  death,  removed  the  lid  of  the 
coffin,  turned  down  the  shroud,  and  revealed  features  which 
had  once  been  handsome,  but  long  since  rendered  almost  hid- 
eous by  drinking.  The  stranger  gazed  with  profound  emo- 
tion, while  he  quietly  drew  from  his  pocket  a  bailiff's  wand, 
and  touching  the  corpse's  face  with  it,  suddenly  altered  his 
manner  to  one  of  considerable  glee,  and  informed  the  servant 
that  he  had  arrested  the  corpse  in  the  king's  name  for  a  debt 
of  £500.  It  was  the  morning  of  the  funeral,  which  was  to  be 
attended  by  half  the  grandees  of  England,  and  in  a  few  min- 
utes the  mourners  began  to  arrive.  But  the  corpse  was  the 
bailiff's  property  till  his  claim  was  paid,  and  naught  but  the 
money  would  soften  the  iron  capturer.  Canning  and  Lord 
Sidmouth  agreed  to  settle  the  matter,  and  over  the  coffin  the 
debt  was  paid. 

Poor  corpse!  was  it  worth  £500 — diseased,  rotting  as  it  was, 
and  about  to  be  given  for  nothing  to  mother  earth  ?  Was  it 
worth  the  pomp  of  the  splendid  funeral  and  the  grand  hypoc- 
risy of  grief  with  which  it  was  borne  to  Westminster  Abbey  ? 


378  THE   STOKIES   FIXED    ON    SHERIDAN. 

Was  not  rather  the  wretched  old  man,  while  he  yet  struggled 
on  in  life,  worth  this  outlay,  worth  this  show  of  sympathy  ? 
Folly  ;  not  folly  only — but  a  lie !  What  recked  the  dead  of 
the  four  noble  pall-bearers — the  Duke  of  Bedford,  the  Earl  of 
Lauderdale,  Earl  Mulgrave,  and  the  Bishop  of  London  ?  What 
good  was  it  to  him  to  be  followed  by  two  royal  highnesses — 
the  Dukes  of  York  and  Sussex — by  two  marquises,  seven  earls, 
three  viscounts,  five  lords,  a  Canning,  a  lord  mayor,  and  a  whole 
regiment  of  honorables  and  right  honorables,  who  now  wore 
the  livery  of  grief,  when  they  had  let  him  die  in  debt,  in  want, 
and  in  misery  ?  Far  more,  if  the  dead  could  feel,  must  he  have 
been  grateful  for  the  honester  tears  of  those  two  untitled  men 
who  had  really  befriended  him  to  the  last  hour,  and  never  aban- 
doned him,  Mr.  Rogers  and  Dr.  Bain.  But  peace ;  let  him  pass 
with  nodding  plumes  and  well-dyed  horses  to  the  great  Wal- 
halla,  and  amid  the  dust  of  many  a  poet  let  the  poet's  dust  find 
rest  and  honor,  secure  at  last  from  the  hand  of  the  bailiff.  There 
was  but  one  nook  unoccupied  in  Poets'  Corner,  and  there  they 
laid  him.  A  simple  marble  was  afforded  by  another  friend  with- 
out a  title — Peter  Moore. 

To  a  life  like  Sheridan's  it  is  almost  impossible  to  do  justice 
in  so  narrow  a  space  as  I  have  here.  He  is  one  of  those  men 
who,  not  to  be  made  out  a  whit  better  or  worse  than  they  are, 
demand  a  careful  investigation  of  all  their  actions,  or  reported 
actions — a  careful  sifting  of  all  the  evidence  for  or  against  them, 
and  a  careful  weeding  of  all  the  anecdotes  told  of  them.  This 
requires  a  separate  biography.  To  give  a  general  idea  of  the 
man,  we  must  be  content  to  give  that  which  he  inspired  in  a 
general  acquaintance.  Many  of  his  "  mots,"  and  more  of  the 
stories  about  him,  may  have  been  invented  for  him,  but  they 
would  scarcely  have  been  fixed  on  Sheridan  if  they  had  not  fit- 
ted more  or  less  his  character :  I  have  therefore  given  them  with- 
out inquiry  as  to  their  veracity.  I  might  have  given  a  hundred 
more,  but  I  have  let  alone  those  anecdotes  which  did  not  seem 
to  illustrate  the  character  of  the  man.  Many  another  good  sto- 
ry is  told  of  him,  and  we  must  content  ourselves  with  one  or 
two.  Take  one  that  is  characteristic  of  his  love  of  fun. 

Sheridan  is  accosted  by  an  elderly  gentleman,  who  has  for- 
gotten the  name  of  a  street  to  which  he  wants  to  go,  and  who 
informs  him  precisely  that  it  is  an  out-of-the-way  name. 

"  Perhaps,  sir,  you  mean  John  Street  ?"  says  Sherry,  all  in- 
nocence. 

"  No,  an  unusual  name." 

"It  can't  be  Charles  Street?" 

Impatience  on  the  part  of  the  old  gentleman. 

"  King  Street  ?"  suggests  the  cruel  wit. 


EXTEMPORE   WIT   AND    INVETERATE   TALKERS.  379 

"  I  tell  you,  sir,  it  is  a  street  with  a  very  odd  name !" 

"  Bless  me,  is  it  Queen  Street  ?" 

Irritation  on  the  part  of  the  old  gentleman. 

"It  must  be  Oxford  Street,"  cries  Sheridan,  as  if  inspired. 

"  Sir,  I  repeat,"  very  testily,  "  that  it  is  a  very  odd  name. 
Every  one  knows  Oxford  Street !" 

Sheridan  appears  to  be  thinking. 

"An  odd  name !     Oh !  ah !  just  so ;  Piccadilly,  of  course  ?" 

Old  gentleman  bounces  away  in  disgust. 

"  Well,  sir,"  Sherry  calls  after  him,  "  I  envy  you  your  admi- 
rable memory !" 

His  wit  was  said  to  have  been  prepared,  like  his  speeches, 
and  he  is  even  reported  to  have  carried  his  book  of  mots  in  his 
pocket,  as  a  young  lady  of  the  middle  class  might,  but  seldom 
does,  carry  her  book  of  etiquette  into  a  party.  But  some  of 
his  wit  was  no  doubt  extempore. 

When  arrested  for  non-attendance  to  a  call  in  the  House, 
soon  after  the  change  of  ministry,  he  exclaimed,  "  How  hard 
to  be  no  sooner  out  of  office  than  into  custody !" 

He  was  not  an  inveterate  talker,  like  Macaulay,  Sydney 
Smith,  or  Jeffrey:  he  seems  rather  to  have  aimed  at  a  strik- 
ing effect  in  all  that  he  said.  When  found  tripping,  he  had  a 
clever  knack  of  getting  out  of  the  difficulty.  In  the  Hastings 
speech  he  complimented  Gibbon  as  a  "luminous"  writer; 
questioned  on  this,  he  replied  archly,  "  I  said  voluminous." 

I  can't  afford  to  be  voluminous  on  Sheridan,  and  so  I  quit 
him. 


BEAU  BRUMMELL. 

IT  is  astonishing  to  what  a  number  of  insignificant  things 
high  art  has  been  applied,  and  with  what  success.  It  is  the 
vice  of  high  civilization  to  look  for  it  and  reverence  it,  where 
a  ruder  age  would  only  laugh  at  its  employment.  Crime  and 
cookery,  especially,  have  been  raised  into  sciences  of  late,  and 
the  professors  of  both  received  the  amount  of  honor  due  to 
their  acquirements.  Who  would  be  so  naive  as  to  sneer  at 
the  author  of  "  The  Art  of  Dining  ?"  or  who  so  ungentlemanly 
as  not  to  pity  the  sorrows  of  a  pious  baronet,  whose  devotion 
to  the  noble  art  of  appropriation  was  shamefully  rewarded 
with  accommodation  gratis  on  board  one  of  Her  Majesty's 
transport-ships  ?  The  disciples  of  Tide  have  left  us  the  literary 
results  of  their  studies,  and  one  at  least,  the  graceful  Alexis 
Soyer,  is  numbered  among  our  public  benefactors.  We  have 
little  doubt  that  as  the  art,  vulgarly  called  "  embezzlement," 
becomes  more  and  more  fashionable,  as  it  does  every  day,  we 
shall  have  a  work  on  the  "Art  of  Appropriation."  It  is  a  pity 
that  Brummell  looked  down  upon  literature :  poor  literature ! 
it  had  a  hard  struggle  to  recover  the  slight,  for  we  are  con- 
vinced there  is  not  a  work  more  wanted  than  the  "Art  of 
Dressing,"  and  "  George  the  Less"  was  almost  the  last  profess- 
or of  that  elaborate  science. 

If  the  maxim,  that  "  whatever  is  worth  doing  at  all  is  worth 
doing  well,"  hold  good,  Beau  Brummell  must  be  regarded  in 
the  light  of  a  great  man.  That  dressing  is  worth  doing  at  all, 
every  body  but  a  Fiji  Islander  seems  to  admit,  for  every  body 
does  it.  If,  then,  a  man  succeeds  in  dressing  better  than  any 
body  else,  it  follows  that  he  is  entitled  to  the  most  universal 
admiration. 

But  there  was  another  object  to  which  this  great  man  con- 
descended to  apply  the  principles  of  high  art — I  mean  aifecta- 
tion.  How  admirably  he  succeeded  in  this  his  life  will  show. 
But  can  we  doubt  that  he  is  entitled  to  our  greatest  esteem 
and  heartiest  gratitude  for  the  studies  he  pursued  with  unre- 
mitting patience  in  these  two  useful  branches,  when  we  find 
that  a  prince  of  the  blood  delighted  to  honor,  and  the  richest, 
noblest,  and  most  distinguished  men  of  half  a,  century  ago  were 
proud  to  know  him  ?  We  are  writing,  then,  of  no  common 
man,  no  mere  beau,  but  of  the  greatest  professor  of  two  of  the 


382 

most  popular  sciences — Dress  and  Affectation.  Let  us  speak 
with  reverence  of  this  wonderful  genius. 

George  Brummell  was  a  "  self-made  man."  That  is,  all  that 
nature,  the  tailors,  stags,  and  padding  had  not  made  of  him, 
he  made  for  himself — his  name,  his  fame,  his  fortune,  and  his 
friends — and  all  these  were  great.  The  author  of  "  Self-help" 
has  most  unaccountably  omitted  all  mention  of  him,  and  most 
erroneously,  for  if  there  ever  was  a  man  who  helped  himself, 
and  no  one  else,  it  was  "  very  sincerely  yours,  George  Bruin- 
mell." 

The  founder  of  the  noble  house  of  Brummell,  the  grandfather 
of  our  hero,  was  either  a  treasury  porter,  or  a  confectioner,  or 
something  else.*  At  any  rate  he  let  lodgings  in  Bury  Street, 
and  whether  from  the  fact  that  his  wife  did  not  purloin  her 
lodgers'  tea  and  sugar,  or  from  some  other  cause,  he  managed 
to  ingratiate  himself  with  one  of  them — who  afterward  became 
Lord  Liverpool — so  thoroughly,  that  through  his  influence  he 
obtained  for  his  son  the  post  of  Private  Secretary  to  Lord 
North.  Nothing  could  have  been  more  fortunate,  except, 
perhaps,  the  son's  next  move,  which  was  to  take  in  marriage 
the  daughter  of  Richardson,  the  owner  of  a  well-knowrn  lot- 
tery-office. Between  the  lottery  of  office  and  the  lottery  of 
love,  Brummell  pere  managed  to  make  a  very  good  fortune. 
At  his  death  he  left  as  much  as  £65,000  to  be  divided  among 
his  three  children — Raikes  says  as  much  as  £30,000  apiece — 
so  that  the  Beau,  if  not  a  fool,  ought  never  to  have  been  a 
pauper. 

George  Bryan  Brummell,  the  second  son  of  this  worthy, 
honored  by  his  birth  the  7th  of  June,  1778.  No  anecdotes  of 
his  childhood  are  preserved,  except  that  he  once  cried  because 
he  could  not  eat  any  more  damson  tart.  In  later  years  he 
would  probably  have  thought  damson  tart  "very  vulgar." 
He  first  turns  up  at  Eton  at  the  age  of  twelve,  and  even  there 
commences  his  distinguished  career,  and  is  known  as  "  Buck 
Brummell."  The  boy  showed  himself  decidedly  father  to  the 
man  here.  Master  George  was  not  vulgar  enough,  nor  so  im- 
prudent, it  may  be  added,  as  to  fight,  row,  or  play  cricket,  but 
he  distinguished  himself  by  the  introduction  of  a  gold  buckle 
in  the  white  stock,  by  never  being  flogged,  and  by  his  ability 
in  toasting  cheese.  We  do  not  hear  much  of  his  classical  at- 
tainments. 

The  very  gentlemanly  youth  was  in  due  time  passed  on  to 
Oriel  College,  Oxford.  Here  he  distinguished  himself  by  a 

*  Mr.  Jesse  says  that  the  Beau's  grandfather  was  a  servant  of  Mr.  Charles 
Monson,  brother  to  the  first  Lord  Monson. 


INVESTING   HIS   CAPITAL.  383 

studied  indifference  to  college  discipline  and  an  equal  dislike 
to  studies.  He  condescended  to  try  for  the  Newdigate  Prize 
poem,  but  his  genius  leaned  far  more  to  the  turn  of  a  coat- 
collar  than  that  of  a  verse,  and,  unhappily  for  the  British  poets, 
their  ranks  were  not  to  be  dignified  by  the  addition  of  this 
illustrious  man.  The  Newdigate  was  given  to  another;  and 
so,  to  punish  Oxford,  the  competitor  left  it  and  poetry  togeth- 
er, after  having  adorned  the  old  quadrangle  of  Oriel  for  less 
than  a  year. 

He  was  now  a  boy  of  seventeen,  and  a  very  fine  boy,  too. 
To  judge  from  a  portrait  taken  in  later  life,  he  was  not  strictly 
handsome ;  but  he  is  described  as  tall,  well  built,  and  of  a  slight 
and  graceful  figure.  Added  to  this,  he  had  got  from  Eton  and 
Oxford,  if  not  much  learning,  many  a  well-born  friend,  and  he 
was  toady  enough  to  cultivate  those  of  better  and  dismiss 
those  of  less  distinction.  He  was  through  life  a  celebrated 
"cutter,"  and  BrummelPs  cut  was  as  much  admired — by  all 
but  the  cuttee  —  as  Brummell's  coat.  Then  he  had  some 
£25,000  as  capital,  and  how  could  he  best  invest  it  ?  He  con- 
sulted no  stock-broker  on  this  weighty  point ;  he  did  not  even 
buy  a  shilling  book  of  advice  that  we  have  seen  advertised  for 
those  who  don't  know  what  to  do  with  their  money.  The 
question  was  answered  in  a  moment  by  the  young  worldling 
of  sixteen :  he  would  enter  a  crack  regiment  and  invest  his 
guineas  in  the  thousand  per  cents,  of  fashionable  life. 

His  namesake,  the  Regent,  was  now  thirty-two,  and  had 
spent  those  years  of  his  life  in  acquiring  the  honorary  title 
of  the  "  first  gentleman  of  Europe,"  by  every  act  of  folly,  de- 
bauch, dissipation,  and  degradation  which  a  prince  can  con% 
veniently  perpetrate.  He  was  the  hero  of  London  society, 
which  adored  and  backbit  him  alternately,  and  he  was  pre- 
cisely the  man  whom  the  boy  Brummell  would  worship.  The 
Regent  was  colonel  of  a  famous  regiment  of  fops — the  10th 
Hussars.  It  was  the  most  expensive,  the  most  impertinent, 
the  best-dressed,  the  worst-moraled  regiment  in  the  British 
army.  Its  officers,  many  of  them  titled,  all  more  or  less  dis- 
tinguished in  the  trying  campaigns  of  London  seasons,  were 
the  intimates  of  the  Prince  Colonel.  Brummell  aspired  to  a 
cornetcy  in  this  brilliant  regiment,  and  obtained  it ;  nor  that 
alone ;  he  secured,  by  his  manners,  or  his  dress,  or  his  impu- 
dence, the  favor  and  companionship — friendship  we  can  not 
say — of  the  prince  who  commanded  it. 

By  this  step  his  reputation  was  made,  and  it  was  only  neces- 
sary to  keep  it  up.  He  had  an  immense  fund  of  good-nature, 
and,  as  long  as  his  money  lasted,  of  good  spirits,  too.  Good 
sayings — that  is,  witty  if  not  wise — are  recorded  of  him,  and 


384  YOUNG   COENET   BKUMMELL. 

his  friends  pronounce  him  a  charming  companion.  Introduced, 
therefore,  into  the  highest  circles  in  England,  he  could  scarcely 
fail  to  succeed.  Young  Cornet  Brummell  became  a  great  fa- 
vorite with  the  fair. 

His  rise  in  the  regiment  was  of  course  rapid :  in  three  years 
he  was  at  the  head  of  a  troop.  The  onerous  duties  of  a  mil- 
itary life,  which  vacillated  between  Brighton  and  London,  and 
consisted  chiefly  in  making  one's  self  agreeable  in  the  mess- 
room,  were  too  much  for  our  hero.  He  neglected  parade,  or 
arrived  too  late :  it  was  such  a  bore  to  have  to  dress  in  a  hur- 
ry. It  is  said  that  he  knew  the  troop  he  commanded  only  by 
the  peculiar  nose  of  one  of  the  men,  and  that  when  a  transfer 
of  men  had  once  been  made,  rode  up  to  the  wrong  troop,  and 
supported  his  mistake  by  pointing  to  the  nose  in  question. 
No  fault,  however,  was  found  with  the  Regent's  favorite,  and 
Brummell  might  have  risen  to  any  rank  if  he  could  have  sup- 
ported the  terrific  labor  of  dressing  for  parade.  Then,  too, 
there  came  wars  and  rumors  of  wars,  and  our  gallant  captain 
shuddered  at  the  vulgarity  of  shedding  blood :  the  supply  of 
smelling-salts  would  never  have  been  liberal  enough  to  keep 
him  from  fainting  on  the  battle-field.  It  is  said,  too,  that  the 
regiment  was  ordered  to  Manchester.  Could  any  thing  be 
more  gross  or  more  ill-bred  ?  The  idea  of  figuring  before  the 
wives  and  daughters  of  cotton-spinners  was  too  fearful ;  and 
from  one  cause  or  another  our  brave  young  captain  determined 
to  retire,  which  he  did  in  1798. 

It  was  now,  therefore,  that  he  commenced  the  profession  of 
a  beau,  and  as  he  is  the  Prince  of  Beaux,  as  his  patron  was  the 
Beau  of  Princes,  and  as  his  fame  has  spread  to  France  and 
Germany,  if  only  as  the  inventor  of  the  trowser ;  and  as  there 
is  no  man  who  on  getting  up  in  the  morning  does  not  put  on 
his  clothes  with  more  or  less  reflection  as  to  whether  they  are 
the  right  ones  to  put  on,  and  as  beaux  have  existed  since  the 
days  of  the  emperor  of  beaux,  Alexander  the  Macedonian,  and 
will  probably  exist  to  all  time,  let  us  rejoice  in  the  high  honor 
of  being  permitted  to  describe  how  this  illustrious  genius 
clothed  his  poor  flesh,  and  made  the  most  of  what  God  had 
given  him — a  body  and  legs. 

The  private  life  of  Brummell  would  in  itself  serve  as  a  book 
of  manners  and  habits.  The  two  were  his  profoundest  study ; 
but,  alas !  his  impudence  marred  the  former,  and  the  latter 
can  scarcely  be  imitated  in  the  present  day.  Still  as  a  great 
example  he  is  yet  invaluable,  and  must  be  described  in  all 
detail. 

His  morning  toilet  was  a  most  elaborate  affair.  Never 
was  Brummell  guilty  of  deshabille.  Like  a  true  man  of  busi- 


THE  TOILET.  385 

ness,  he  devoted  the  best  and  earliest  hours — and  many  of 
them  too — to  his  profession,  namely — dressing.  His  dressing- 
room  was  a  studio,  in  which  he  daily  compared  that  elaborate 
portrait  of  George  Brummell  which  was  to  be  exhibited  for  a 
few  hours  in  the  club-rooms  and  drawing-rooms  of  town,  only 
to  be  taken  to  pieces  again,  and  again  made  up  for  the  even- 
ing. Charles  I.  delighted  to  resort  of  a  morning  to  the  studio 
of  Vandyck,  and  watch  his  favorite  artist's  progress.  The 
Regent  George  was  no  less  devoted  to  art,  for  we  are  assured 
by  Mr.  Raikes  that  he  often  visited  his  favorite  beau  in  the 
morning  to  watch  his  toilet,  and  would  sometimes  stay  so 
late  that  he  would  send  his  horses  away,  insisting  on  Brum- 
mell giving  him  a  quiet  dinner,  "  which  generally  ended  in  a 
deep  potation." 

There  are,  no  doubt,  many  fabulous  myths  floating  about 
concerning  this  illustrious  man ;  and  his  biographer,  Captain 
Jesse,  seems  anxious  to  defend  him  from  the  absurd  stories  of 
French  writers,  who  asserted  that  he  employed  two  glovers  to 
cover  his  hands,  to  one  of  whom  were  intrusted  the  thumbs, 
to  the  other  the  fingers  and  hand,  and  three  barbers  to  dress 
his  hair,  while  his  boots  were  polished  with  champagne,  his 
cravats  designed  by  a  celebrated  portrait  painter,  and  so  forth. 
These  may  be  pleasant  inventions,  but  Captain  Jesse's  own 
account  of  his  toilet,  even  when  the  Beau  was  broken,  and 
living  in  elegant  poverty  abroad,  is  quite  absurd  enough  to 
render  excusable  the  ingenious  exaggerations  of  the  foreign 
writer. 

The  batterie  de  toilette,  we  are  told,  was  of  silver,  and  in- 
cluded a  spitting-dish,  for  its  owner  said  uhe  could  not  spit 
into  clay."  Napoleon  shaved  himself,  but  Brummell  was  not 
quite  great  enough  to  do  that,  just  as  my  Lord  So-and-So 
walks  to  church  on  Sunday,  while  his  neighbor,  the  Manches- 
ter millionaire,  can  only  arrive  there  in  a  chariot  and  pair. 

His  ablutions  took  no  less  than  two  whole  hours !  What 
knowledge  might  have  been  gained,  what  good  done  in  the 
time  he  devoted  to  rubbing  his  lovely  person  with  a  hair 
glove !  Cleanliness  was,  in  fact,  BrummelPs  religion ;  perhaps 
because  it  is  generally  set  down  as  "  next  to  godliness,"  a 
proximity  with  which  the  Beau  was  quite  satisfied,  for  he  never 
attempted  to  pass  on  to  that  next  stage.  Poor  fool,  he  might 
rub  every  particle  of  moisture  oif  the  skin  of  his  body — he 
might  be  clean  as  a  kitten — but  he  could  not  and  did  not  purify 
his  mind  with  all  this  friction ;  and  the  man  who  would  have 
fainted  to  see  a  black  speck  upon  his  shirt,  was  not  at  all  shock- 
ed at  the  indecent  conversation  in  which  he  and  his  compan- 
ions occasionally  indulged. 

R 


386  "CREASING  DOWN." 

The  body  cleansed,  the  face  had  next  to  be  brought  up  as 
near  perfection  as  nature  would  allow.  With  a  small  looking- 
glass  in  one  hand,  and  tweezers  in  the  other,  he  carefully  re- 
moved the  tiniest  hairs  that  he  could  discover  on  his  cheeks  or 
chin,  enduring  the  pain  like  a  martyr. 

Then  came  the  shirt,  which  was  in  his  palmy  days  changed 
three  times  a  day,  and  then  in  due  course  the  great  business 
of  the  cravat.  Captain  Jesse's  minute  account  of  the  process 
of  tying  this  can  surely  be  relied  on,  and  presents  one  of  the 
most  ludicrous  pictures  of  folly  and  vanity  that  can  be  imag- 
ined. Had  Brummell  never  lived,  and  a  novelist  or  play-writer 
described  the  toilet  which  Captain  Jesse  affirms  to  have  been 
his  daily  achievement,  he  would  have  had  the  critics  about  him 
with  the  now  common  phrase — "  This  book  is  a  tissue,  not  only 
of  improbabilities,  but  of  actual  impossibilities."  The  collar, 
then,  was  so  large,  that  in  its  natural  condition  it  rose  high 
above  the  wearer's  head,  and  some  ingenuity  was  required  to 
reduce  it  by  delicate  folds  to  exactly  that  height  which  the 
Beau  judged  to  be  correct.  Then  came  the  all-majestic  white 
neck-tie,  a  foot  in  breadth.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that 
Brummell  had  the  neck  of  a  swan  or  a  camel — far  from  it.  The 
worthy  fool  had  now  to  undergo,  with  admirable  patience,  the 
mysterious  process  known  to  our  papas  as  "  creasing  down." 
The  head  was  thrown  back,  as  if  ready  for  a  dentist ;  the  stiff 
white  tie  applied  to  the  throat,  and  gradually  wrinkled  into 
half  its  actual  breath  by  the  slow  downward  movement  of  the 
chin.  When  all  was  done,  we  can  imagine  that  comfort  was 
sacrificed  to  elegance,  as  it  was  then  considered,  and  that  the 
sudden  appearance  of  Venus  herself  could  not  have  induced 
the  deluded  individual  to  turn  his  head  in  a  hurry. 

It  is  scarcely  profitable  to  follow  this  lesser  deity  into  all  the 
details  of  his  self-adornment.  It  must  suffice  to  say  that  he 
affected  an  extreme  neatness  and  simplicity  of  dress,  every  item 
of  which  was  studied  and  discussed  for  many  an  hour.  In  the 
mornings  he  was  still  guilty  of  hessians  and  pantaloons,  or 
"  tops"  and  buckskins,  with  a  blue  coat  and  buff  waistcoat. 
The  costume  is  not  so  ancient,  but  that  one  may  tumble  now 
and  then  on  a  country  squire  who  glories  in  it  and  denounces 
us  juveniles  as  "  bears"  for  want  of  a  similar  precision.  Poor 
Brummell,  he  cordially  hated  the  country  squires,  and  would 
have  wanted  rouge  for  a  week  if  he  could  have  dreamed  that 
his  pet  attire  would,  some  fifty  years  later,  be  represented  only 
by  one  of  that  class  which  he  was  so  anxious  to  exclude  from 
Watier's. 

But  it  was  in  the  evening  that  he  displayed  his  happy  inven- 
tion of  the  trowser,  or  rather  its  introduction  from  Germany. 


A    GKEAT    GENTLEMAN.  387 

This  article  he  wore  very  tight  to  the  leg,  and  buttoned  over 
the  ankle,  exactly  as  we  see  it  in  old  prints  of  "  the  fashion." 
Then  came  the  wig,  and  on  that  the  hat.  It  is  a  vain  and 
thankless  task  to  defend  Brummell  from  the  charge  of  being  a 
dandy.  If  one  proof  of  his  devotion  to  dress  were  wanted,  it 
would  be  the  fact  that  this  hat,  once  stuck  jauntily  on  one  side 
of  the  wig,  was  never  removed  in  the  street  even  to  salute  a 
lady — so  that,  inasmuch  as  he  sacrificed  his  manners  to  his  ap- 
pearance, he  may  be  fairly  set  down  as  a  fop. 

The  perfect  artist  could  not  be  expected  to  be  charitable  to 
the  less  successful.  Dukes  and  princes  consulted  him  on  the 
make  of  their  coats,  and  discussed  tailors  with  him  with  as 
much  solemnity  as  divines  might  dispute  on  a  mystery  of  re- 
ligion. Brummell  did  not  spare  them.  "Bedford,"  said  he, 
to  the  duke  of  that  name,  fingering  a  new  garment  which  his 
grace  had  submitted  to  his  inspection,  "  do  you  call  this  thing 
a  coat?"  Again,  meeting  a  noble  acquaintance  who  wore 
shoes  in  the  morning,  he  stopped  and  asked  him  what  he  had 
got  upon  his  feet.  "  Oh  !  shoes  are  they  ?"  quoth  he,  with  a 
well-bred  sneer,  "I  thought  they  were  slippers."  He  was 
even  ashamed  of  his  own  brother,  and  when  the  latter  came 
to  town,  begged  him  to  keep  to  the  back  streets  till  his  new 
clothes  were  sent  home.  Well  might  his  friend  the  Regent  say, 
that  he  was  "  a  mere  tailor's  dummy  to  hang  clothes  upon." 

But  in  reality  Brummell  was  more.  He  had  some  sharpness 
and  some  taste.  But  the  former  was  all  brought  out  in  sneers, 
and  the  latter  in  snuiF-boxes.  His  whole  mind  could  have 
been  put  into  one  of  these.  He  had  a  splendid  collection  of 
them,  and  was  famous  for  the  grace  with  which  he  opened  the 
lid  of  his  box  with  the  thumb  of  the  hand  that  carried  it,  while 
he  delicately  took  his  pinch  with  two  fingers  of  the  other. 
This  and  his  bow  were  his  chief  acquirements,  and  his  reputa- 
tion for  manners  was  based  on  the  distinction  of  his  manner. 
He  could  not  drive  in  a  public  conveyance,  but  he  could  be 
rude  to  a  well-meaning  lady ;  he  never  ate  vegetables — one  pea 
he  confessed  to — but  he  did  not  mind  borrowing  from  his 
friends  money  which  he  knew  he  could  never  return.  He  was 
a  great  gentleman,  a  gentleman  of  his  patron's  school — in 
short,  a  well-dressed  snob.  But  one  thing  is  due  to  Brum- 
mell :  he  made  the  assumption  of  being  "  a  gentleman"  so 
thoroughly  ridiculous  that  few  men  of  keen  sense  care  now  for 
the  title :  at  least,  not  as  a  class  distinction.  Nor  is  it  to  be 
wondered  at ;  when  your  tailor's  assistant  is  "  a  gentleman," 
and  would  be  mightily  disgusted  at  being  called  any  thing 
else,  you,  with  your  indomitable  pride  of  caste,  can  scarcely 
care  for  the  patent. 


388  ANECDOTES    OF   BEUMMELL. 

Brummell's  claim  to  the  title  was  based  on  his  walk,  his 
coat,  his  cravat,  and  the  grace  with  which  he  indulged,  as 
Captain  Jesse  delightfully  calls  it,  uthe  nasal  pastime"  of  tak- 
ing snuff.  All  the  rest  was  impudence;  and  many  are  the 
anecdotes — most  of  them  familiar  as  household  words — which 
are  told  of  his  impertinence.  The  story  of  Mrs.  Johnson- 
Thompson  is  one  of  those  oft-told  tales,  which,  from  having 
become  Joe  Millers,  have  gradually  passed  out  of  date  and 
been  almost  forgotten.  Two  rival  party-givers  rejoiced  in  the 
aristocratic  names  of  Johnson  and  Thompson.  The  former 
lived  near  Finsbury,  the  latter  near  Grosvenor  Square,  and 
Mrs.  Thompson  was  somehow  sufficiently  fashionable  to  expect 
the  Regent  himself  at  her  assemblies.  Brummell,  among  other 
impertinencies,  was  fond  of  going  where  he  was  not  invited  or 
wanted.  The  two  rivals  gave  a  ball  on  the  same  evening,  and 
a  card  was  sent  to  the  Beau  by  her  of  Finsbury.  He  chose 
to  go  to  the  Grosvenor  Square  house,  in  hopes  of  meeting  the 
Regent,  then  his  foe.  Mrs.  Thompson  was  justly  disgusted, 
and  with  a  vulgarity  quite  deserved  by  the  intruder,  told  him 
he  was  not  invited.  The  Beau  made  a  thousand  apologies, 
hummed,  hawed,  and  drew  a  card  from  his  pocket.  It  was 
the  rival's  invitation,  and  was  indignantly  denounced.  "  Dear 
me,  how  very  unfortunate,"  said  the  Beau,  "but  you  know 
Johnson  and  Thompson — I  mean  Thompson  and  Johnson — 
are  so  very  much  alike.  Mrs.  Johnson-Thompson,  I  wish  you 
a  very  good-evening." 

Perhaps  there  is  no  vulgarity  greater  than  that  of  rallying 
people  on  their  surnames,  but  our  exquisite  gentleman  had  not 
wit  enough  to  invent  one  superior  to  such  a  puerile  amusement. 
Thus,  on  one  occasion,  he  woke  up  at  three  in  the  morning  a 
certain  Mr.  Snodgrass,  and  when  the  worthy  put  his  head  out 
of  the  window  in  alarm,  said  quietly,  "  Pray,  sir,  is  your  name 
Snodgrass  ?"  "  Yes,  sir,  it  is  Snodgrass."  "  Snodgrass — Snod- 
grass— it  is  a  very  singular  name.  Good-by,  Mr.  Snodgrass" 
There  was  more  wit  in  his  remark  to  Poodle  Byng,  a  wTell- 
known  puppy,  whom  he  met  one  day  driving  in  the  Park  with 
a  French  dog  in  his  curricle.  "  Ah  !"  cried  the  Beau,  "  how 
d'ye  do,  Byng  ?  a  family  vehicle,  I  see." 

It  seems  incredulous  to  modern  gentlemen  that  such  a  man 
should  have  been  tolerated  even  at  a  club.  Take,  for  instance, 
his  vulgar  treatment  of  Lord  Mayor  Combe,  whose  name  we 
still  see  with  others  over  many  a  public-house  in  London,  and 
who  was  then  a  most  prosperous  brewer  and  thriving  gambler. 
At  Brookes's  one  evening  the  Beau  and  the  Brewer  were  play- 
ing at  the  same  table :  "  Come,  Mash-tub"  cried  the  "  gentle- 
man," "  what  do  you  set  ?"  Mash-tub  unresentingly  set  a  pony, 


"DON'T  FORGET,  BEFM — GOOSE  AT  FOUR!"          389 

and  the  Beau  won  twelve  of  him  in  succession.  Pocketing  his 
cash,  he  made  him  a  bow,  and  exclaimed,  "  Thank  you,  Alder- 
man, in  future  I  shall  drink  no  porter  but  yours."  But  Combe 
was  worthy  of  his  namesake,  Shakspeare's  friend,  and  answered 
very  aptly,  "  I  wish,  sir,  that  every  other  blackguard  in  London 
would  tell  me  the  same." 

Then  again,  after  ruining  a  young  fool  of  fortune  at  the  ta- 
bles, and  being  reproached  by  the  youth's  father  for  leading 
his  son  astray,  he  replied  with  charming  affectation,  "  Why, 
sir,  I  did  all  I  could  for  him.  I  once  gave  him  my  arm  all  the 
way  from  White's  to  Brookes's  !" 

When  Brummell  really  wanted  a  dinner,  while  at  Calais,  he 
could  not  give  up  his  impertinence  for  the  sake  of  it.  Lord 
Westmoreland  called  on  him,  and,  perhaps,  out  of  compassion, 
asked  him  to  dine  at  three  o*  clock  with  him.  "  Your  lordship 
is  very  kind,"  said  the  Beau,  "  but  really  I  could  not  feed  at 
such  an  hour."  Sooner  or  later  he  was  glad  to  feed  with  any 
one  who  was  toady  enough  to  ask  him.  He  was  once  placed 
in  a  delightfully  awkward  position  from  having  accepted  the 
invitation  of  a  charitable  but  vulgar-looking  Britisher  at  Ca- 
lais. He  was  walking  with  Lord  Sefton,  when  the  individual 
passed  and  nodded  familiarly.  "Who's  your  friend,  Brum- 
mell ?"  "  Not  mine,  he  must  be  bowing  to  you."  But  pres- 
ently the  man  passed  again,  and  this  time  was  cruel  enough 
to  exclaim,  "Don't  forget,  Brum,  don't  forget — goose  at  four!" 
The  poor  Beau  must  have  wished  the  earth  to  open  under  him. 
He  was  equally  imprudent  in  the  way  in  which  he  treated  old 
acquaintance  who  arrived  at  the  town  to  which  he  had  retreat- 
ed, and  of  whom  he  was  fool  enough  to  be  ashamed.  He  gen- 
erally took  away  their  characters  summarily,  but  on  one  occa- 
sion was  frightened  almost  out  of  his  wits  by  being  called  to 
account  for  this  conduct.  An  officer  who  had  lost  his  nose  in 
an  engagement  in  the  Peninsula  called  on  him,  and  in  very 
strong  terms  requested  to  know  why  the  Beau  had  reported 
that  he  was  a  retired  hatter.  His  manner  alarmed  the  rascal, 
who  apologized,  and  protested  that  there  must  be  a  mistake ; 
he  had  never  said  so.  The  officer  retired,  and  as  he  was  go- 
ing, Brummell  added,  "  Yes,  it  must  be  a  mistake,  for  now  I 
think  of  it,  I  never  dealt  with  a  hatter  without  a  nose." 

So  much  for  the  good-breeding  of  this  friend  of  George  IV. 
and  the  Duke  of  York. 

His  affectation  was  quite  as  great  as  his  impudence ;  and 
he  won  the  reputation  of  fastidiousness — nothing  gives  more 
prestige  by  dint  of  being  openly  rude.  No  hospitality  or  kind- 
ness melted  him,  when  he  thought  he  could  gain  a  march.  At 
one  dinner,  not  liking  the  champagne,  he  called  to  the  servant 


390  OFFERS    OF    INTIMACY    KESENTED. 

to  give  him  "  some  more  of  that  cider :"  at  another,  to  which 
he  was  invited  in  days  when  a  dinner  was  a  charity  to  him, 
after  helping  himself  to  a  wing  of  capon,  and  trying  a  morsel 
of  it,  he  took  it  up  in  his  napkin,  called  to  his  dog — he  was 
generally  accompanied  by  a  puppy,  even  to  parties,  as  if  one 
at  a  time  were  not  enough — and  presenting  it  to  him,  said 
aloud,  "  Here,  Atons,  try  if  you  can  get  your  teeth  through 
that,  for  I'm  d—d  if  I  can!" 

To  the  last  he  resented  offers  of  intimacy  from  those  whom 
he  considered  his  inferiors,  and  as  there  are  ladies  enough  ev- 
ery where,  he  had  ample  opportunity  for  administering  rebuke 
to  those  who  pressed  into  his  society.  On  one  occasion  he 
was  sauntering  with  a  friend  at  Caen  under  the  window  of  a 
lady  who  longed  for  nothing  more  than  to  have  the  great  ar- 
biter elegantiarum  at  her  house.  When  seeing  him  beneath, 
she  put  her  head  out,  and  called  out  to  him,  "  Good-evening, 
Mr.  Brummell,  won't  you  come  up  and  take  tea  ?"  The  Beau 
looked  up  with  extreme  severity  expressed  on  his  face,  and 
replied,  u  Madam,  you  take  medicine — you  take  a  walk — you 
take  a  liberty — but  you  drink  tea,"  and  walked  on,  having,  it 
may  be  hoped,  cured  the  lady  of  her  admiration. 

In  the  life  of  such  a  man  there  could  not  of  course  be  much 
striking  incident.  He  lived  for  "  society,"  and  the  whole  of 
his  story  consists  in  his  rise  and  fall  in  that  narrow  world. 
Though  admired  and  sought  after  by  the  women — so  much  so 
that  at  his  death  his  chief  assets  were  locks  of  hair,  the  only 
things  he  could  not  have  turned  into  money — he  never  mar- 
ried. Wedlock  might  have  sobered  him,  and  made  him  a  more 
sensible,  if  not  more  respectable,  member  of  society,  but  his 
advances  toward  matrimony  never  brought  him  to  the  crisis. 
He  accounted  for  one  rejection  in  his  usual  way,  "What  could 
I  do,  my  dear  fellar"  he  lisped,  "  when  I  actually  saw  Lady 
Mary  eat  cabbage?"  At  another  time  he  is  said  to  have  in- 
duced some  deluded  young  creature  to  elope  with  him  from  a 
ball-room,  but  managed  the  affair  so  ill,  that  the  lovers  (?)  were 
caught  in  the  next  street,  and  the  affair  came  to  an  end.  He 
wrote  rather  ecstatic  love-letters  to  Lady  Marys  and  Miss 

s,  gave  married  ladies  advice  on  the  treatment  of  their 

spouses,  and  was  tender  to  various  widows,  but  though  he 
went  on  in  this  way  through  life,  he  was  never,  it  would  seem, 
in  love,  from  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  incapable  of  passion. 

Perhaps  he  was  too  much  of  a  woman  to  care  much  for 
women.  He  was  certainly  egregiously  effeminate.  About  the 
only  creatures  he  could  love  were  poodles.  When  one  of  his 
dogs,  from  overfeeding,  was  taken  ill,  he  sent  for  two  dog- 
doctors,  and  consulted  very  gravely  with  them  on  the  reme- 


BKUMMELL   OUT   HUNTING.  391 

dies  to  be  applied.  The  canine  physicians  came  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  she  must  be  bled.  "  Bled !"  said  Brummell,  in  hor- 
ror ;  "  I  shall  leave  the  room  :  inform  me  when  the  operation 
is  over."  When  the  dog  died,  he  shed  tears — probably  the 
only  ones  he  had  shed  since  childhood ;  and  though  at  that 
time  receiving  money  from  many  an  old  friend  in  England, 
complained,  with  touching  melancholy,  "  that  he  had  lost  the 
only  friend  he  had !"  His  grief  lasted  three  whole  days,  dur- 
ing which  he  shut  himself  up,  and  would  see  no  one ;  but  we 
are  not  told  that  he  ever  thus  mourned  over  any  human  being. 

His  eifeminacy  was  also  shown  in  his  dislike  to  field-sports. 
His  shooting  exploits  were  confined  to  the  murder  of  a  pair  of 
pet  pigeons  perched  on  a  roof,  while  he  confessed,  as  regards 
hunting,  that  it  was  a  bore  to  get  up  so  early  in  the  morning 
only  to  have  one's  boots  and  leathers  splashed  by  galloping 
farmers.  However,  hunting  was  a  fashion,  and  Brummell  must 
needs  appear  to  hunt.  He  therefore  kept  a  stud  of  hunters, 
in  his  better  days,  near  Belvoir,  the  Duke  of  Rutland's,  where 
he  was  a  frequent  visitor,  and  if  there  was  a  near  meet,  would 
ride  out  in  pink  and  tops  to  see  the  hounds  break  cover,  fol- 
low through  a  few  gates,  and  return  to  the  more  congenial  at- 
mosphere of  the  drawing-room.  He,  however,  condescended 
to  bring  his  taste  to  bear  on  the  hunting-dress ;  and,  it  is  said, 
introduced  white  tops  instead  of  the  ancient  mahoganies.  That 
he  could  ride  there  seems  reason  to  believe,  but  it  is  equally 
probable  that  he  was  afraid  to  do  so.  His  valor  was  certainly 
composed  almost  entirely  of  its  "  better  part,"  and  indeed  had 
so  much  prudence  in  it  that  it  may  be  doubted  if  there  was 
any  of  the  original  stock  left.  Once  when  he  had  been  taking 
away  somebody's  character,  the  "friend"  of  the  maligned  gen- 
tleman entered  his  apartment,  and  very  menacingly  demanded 
satisfaction  for  his  principal,  unless  an  apology  were  tendered 
"in  five  minutes."  "Five  minutes!"  answered  the  exquisite, 
as  pale  as  death,  "  five  seconds,  or  sooner  if  you  like." 

Brummell  was  no  fool,  in  spite  of  his  follies.  He  had  tal- 
ents of  a  mediocre  kind,  if  he  had  chosen  to  make  a  better  use 
of  them.  Yet  the  general  opinion  was  not  in  favor  of  his  wis- 
dom. He  quite  deserved  Sheridan's  cool  satire  for  his  affecta- 
tion, if  not  for  his  want  of  mind. 

The  Wit  and  the  Beau  met  one  day  at  Charing  Cross,  and 
it  can  well  be  imagined  that  the  latter  was  rather  disgusted 
at  being  seen  so  far  east  of  St.  James's  Street,  and  drawled  out 
to  Sheridan,  "  Sherry,  my  dear  boy,  don't  mention  that  you 
saw  me  in  this  filthy  part  of  the  town,  though,  perhaps,  I  am 
rather  severe,  for  his  Grace  of  Northumberland  resides  some- 
where about  this  spot,  if  I  don't  mistake.  The  fact  is,  my  dear 


392  ANECDOTE   OF   SHEKIDAN   AND  BRUMMELL. 

boy,  I  have  been  in  the  d— d  City,  to  the  Bank ;  I  wish  they 
would  remove  it  to  the  West  End,  for  re-all-y  it  is  quite  a  bore 
to  go  to  such  a  place ;  more  particularly  as  one  can  not  be  seen 
in  one's  own  equipage  beyond  Somerset  House,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc., 
in  the  Brummellian  style. 

"  Nay,  my  good  fellow,"  was  the  answer  to  this  peroration, 
"  traveling  from  the  East  ?  impossible !" 

"  Why,  my  dear  boy,  why  ?" 

"  Because  the  wise  men  came  from  the  East." 

"  So  then,  sa-ar,  you  think  me  a  fool  ?" 

"  By  no  means ;  I  know  you  to  be  one,"  quoth  Sherry,  and 
turned  away.  It  is  due  to  both  the  parties  to  this  anecdote 
to  state  that  it  is  quite  apocryphal,  and  rests  on  the  slenderest 
authority.  However,  whether  fool  or  not,  Brummell  has  one 
certain,  though  small,  claim  upon  certain  small  readers.  Were 
you  born  in  a  modern  generation,  when  scraps  of  poetry  were 
forbidden  in  your  nursery,  and  no  other  pabulum  was  offered 
to  your  infant  stomach,  but  the  rather  dull  biographies  of 
rather  dull,  though  very  upright  men  ? — if  so,  I  pity  you.  Old 
airs  of  a  jaunty  jig-like  kind  are  still  haunting  the  echoes  of 
my  brain.  Among  them  is — 

"  The  butterfly  was  a  gentleman, 

Which  nobody  can  refute : 
He  left  his  lady-love  at  home, 
And  roamed  in  a  velvet  suit." 

I  remember  often  to  have  ruminated  over  this  character  of 
an  innocent,  and,  I  believe,  calumniated  insect.  He  was  a  gen- 
tleman, and  the  consequences  thereof  were  twofold :  he  aban- 
doned the  young  woman  who  had  trusted  her  affections  to  him, 
and  attired  his  person  in  a  complete  costume  of  the  best  Ly- 
ons silk-velvet — not  the  proctor's  velvet,  which  Theodore  felt 
with  thumb  and  finger,  impudently  asking,  "  how  much  a 
yard?"  I  secretly  resolved  to  do  the  same  as  Mr.  Butterfly 
when  I  came  of  age.  But  the  said  Mr.  Butterfly  had  a  varied 
and  somewhat  awful  history,  all  of  which  was  narrated  in  va- 
rious ditties  chanted  by  my  nurse.  I  could  not  quite  join  in 
her  vivid  assertion  that  she  would 

4 'Be  a  butterfly, 
Born  in  a  bower, 
Christened  in  a  tea-pot, 
And  dead  in  an  hour." 

^Etat.  four,  life  is  dear,  and  the  idea  of  that  early  demise  was 
far  from  welcome  to  me.  I  privily  agreed  that  I  would  not 
be  a  butterfly.  But  there  was  no  end  to  the  history  of  this 
very  inconstant  insect  in  our  nursery  lore.  We  didn't  care  a 
drop  of  honey  for  Dr.  Watts's  "  Busy  Bee ;"  we  infinitely  pre- 


THE   BEAU'S   POETICAL   EFFORTS.  393 

ferrecl  the  account — not  in  the  "Morning  Post" — of  the  "But- 
terfly's Ball"  and  the  "  Grasshopper's  Feast ;"  and  few,  per- 
haps, have  ever  given  children  more  pleasures  of  imagination 
than  William  Roscoe,  its  author.  There  were  some  among  us, 
however,  who  were  already  being  weaned  to  a  knowledge  of 
life's  mysterious  changes,  and  we  sought  the  third  volume  of 
the  romance  of  the  flitting  gaudy  thing  in  a  little  poem  called 
"The  Butterfly's  Funeral." 

Little  dreamed  we,  when  in  our  pretty  little  song-books  we 
saw  the  initial  "  B."  at  the  bottom  of  these  verses,  that  a  real 
human  butterfly  had  written  them,  and  that  they  conveyed  a 
solemn  prognostication  of  a  fate  that  was  not  his.  Little  we 
dreamed,  as  we  lisped  out  the  verses,  that  the  "  gentleman  who 
roamed  in  a"  not  velvet  but  "plum-colored  suit,"  according  to 
Lady  Hester  Stanhope,  was  the  illustrious  George  Brummell. 
The  Beau  wrote  these  trashy  little  rhymes — pretty  in  their 
way — and,  since  I  was  once  a  child,  and  learnt  them  off  by 
heart,  I  will  not  cast  a  stone  at  them.  Brummell  indulged  in 
such  trifling  poetizing,  but  never  went  farther.  It  is  a  pity  he 
did  not  write  his  memoirs ;  they  would  have  added  a  valuable 
page  to  the  history  of  "  Vanity  Fair." 

Brummell' s  London  glory  lasted  from  1V98  to  1816.  His 
chief  club  was  Watier's.  It  was  a  superb  assemblage  of  game- 
sters and  fops — knaves  and  fools;  and  it  is  difficult  to  say 
which  element  predominated.  For  a  time  Brummell  was  mon- 
arch there ;  but  his  day  of  reckoning  came  at  last.  Byron  and 
Moore,  Sir  Henry  Mildmay  and  Mr.  Pierrepoint,  were  among 
the  numbers.  Play  ran  high  there,  and  Brummell  once  won 
nearly  as  much  as  his  squandered  patrimony,  £26,000.  Of 
course  he  not  only  lost  it  again,  but  much  more — indeed  his 
whole  capital.  It  was  after  some  heavy  loss  that  he  was  walk- 
ing home  through  Berkeley  Street  with  Mr.  Raikes,  when  he 
saw  something  glittering  in  the  gutter,  picked  it  up,  and  found 
it  to  be  a  crooked  sixpence.  Like  all  small-minded  men,  he 
had  a  great  fund  of  superstition,  and  he  wore  the  talisman  of 
good  luck  for  some  time.  For  two  years,  we  are  told,  after 
this  finding  of  treasure-trove,  success  attended  him  in  play — 
macao,  the  very  pith  of  hazard,  was  the  chief  game  at  Watier's 
— and  he  attributed  it  all  to  the  sixpence.  At  last  he  lost  it, 
and  luck  turned  against  him.  So  goes  the  story.  It  is  proba- 
bly much  more  easily  accountable.  Few  men  played  honestly 
in  those  days  without  losing  to  the  dishonest,  and  we  have  no 
reason  to  charge  the  Beau  with  malpractice.  However  this 
may  be,  his  losses  at  play  first  brought  about  his  ruin.  The 
Jews  were,  of  course,  resorted  to ;  and  if  Brummell  did  not, 
like  Charles  Fox,  keep  a  Jerusalem  Chamber,  it  was  only  be- 

R2 


394  THE   BREACH    WITH    THE   PRINCE    OF    WALES. 

cause  the  sum  total  of  his  fortune  was  pretty  well  known  to 
the  money-lenders. 

"Then  came  the  change — the  check,  the  fall : 
Pain  rises  up — old  pleasures  pall. 
There  is  one  remedy  for  all." 

This  remedy  was  the  crossing  of  the  Channel,  a  crossing  swept 
by  beggars,  who  levy  a  heavy  toll  on  those  who  pass  over  it. 

The  decline  of  the  Beau  was  rapid,  but  not  without  its  eclat. 
A  breach  with  his  royal  patron  led  the  way.  It  is  presumed 
that  every  reader  of  these  volumes  has  heard  the  famous  story 
of  "  Wales,  ring  the  bell  1"  but  not  all  may  know  its  particu- 
lars. 

A  deep  impenetrable  mystery  hangs  over  this  story.  Per- 
haps some  German  of  the  twenty-first  century — some  future 
Gifford,  or  who  not — will  put  his  wits  to  work  to  solve  the 
riddle.  In  very  sooth  il  ne  vaut  pas  la  chandelle.  A  quarrel 
did  take  place  between  George  the  Prince  and  George  the 
Less,  but  of  its  causes  no  living  mortal  is  cognizant :  we  can 
only  give  the  received  versions.  It  appears,  then,  that  dining 
with  H.  R.  H.  the  Prince  of  Wales,  Master  Brummell  asked 
him  to  ring  the  bell.  Considering  the  intimacy  between  them, 
and  that  the  Regent  often  sacrificed  his  dignity  to  his  amuse- 
ment, there  was  nothing  extraordinary  in  this.  But  it  is  added 
that  the  Prince  did  ring  the  bell  in  question — unhappy  bell  to 
jar  so  between  two  such  illustrious  friends ! — and  when  the 
.servant  came,  ordered  "  Mr.  BrummelPs  carriage !"  Another 
version  palms  oif  the  impertinence  on  a  drunken  midshipman, 
who,  being  related  to  the  Comptroller  of  the  Household,  had 
been  invited  to  dinner  by  the  Regent.  Another  yet  states  that 
Brummell,  being  asked  to  ring  the  said  bell,  replied,  'Your 
Royal  Highness  is  close  to  it."  No  one  knows  the  truth  of 
the  legend,  any  more  than  whether  Homer  was  a  man  or  a 
myth.  It  surely  does  not  matter.  The  friends  quarreled,  and 
perhaps  it  was  time  they  should  do  so,  for  they  had  never  im- 
proved one  another's  morals ;  but  it  is  only  fair  to  the  Beau  to 
add  that  he  always  denied  the  whole  aftair,  and  that  he  himself 
gave  as  the  cause  of  the  quarrel  his  own  sarcasms  on  the  Prince's 
increasing  corpulency,  and  his  resemblance  to  Mrs.  Fitzherbert's 
porter,  "  Big  Ben."  Certainly  some  praise  is  due  to  the  Beau 
for  the  sang  froid  with  which  he  appeared  to  treat  the  matter, 
though  in  reality  dreadfully  cut  up  about  it.  He  lounged 
about,  made  amusing  remarks  on  his  late  friend  and  patron, 
swore  he  would  "cut"  him,  and,  in  short,  behaved  with  his  us- 
ual aplomb.  The  "  Wales,  ring  the  bell,"  was  sufficient  proof 
of  his  impudence,  but  "  Who's  your  fat  friend  ?"  was  really 
good. 


THE  UEST  THING  UEAU  I3KUMMEH,  EVEB  SAID. 


"WHO'S   YOUR  FAT  FRIEND?"  397 

It  is  well  known,  in  all  probability,  that  George  IV.  con- 
templated with  as  much  disgust  and  horror  the  increasing  ro- 
tundity of  his  "  presence"  as  ever  a  maiden  lady  of  a  certain 
age  did  her  first  gray  hair.  Soon  after  the  bell  affair,  the  royal 
beau  met  his  former  friend  in  St.  James's  Street,  and  resolved 
to  cut  him.  This  was  attacking  Brummell  with  his  own  pet 
weapon,  but  not  with  success.  Each  antagonist  was  leaning 
on  the  arm  of  a  friend.  "Jack  Lee,"  who  was  thus  support- 
ing the  Beau,  was  intimate  with  the  Prince,  who,  to  make  the 
cut  the  more  marked,  stopped  and  talked  to  him  without  tak- 
ing the  slightest  notice  of  Brummell.  After  a  time  both  par- 
ties moved  on,  and  then  came  the  moment  of  triumph  and 
revenge.  It  was  sublime !  Turning  round  half  way,  so  that 
his  words  could  not  fail  to  be  heard  by  the  retreating  Regent, 
the  Beau  asked  of  his  companion  in  his  usual  drawl,  "  Well, 
Jack,  who's  your  fat  friend  ?"  The  coolness,  presumption,  and 
impertinence  of  the  question  perhaps  made  it  the  best  thing 
the  Beau  ever  said,  and  from  that  time  the  Prince  took  care 
not  to  risk  another  encounter  with  him.* 

Brummell  was  scotched  rather  than  killed  by  the  Prince's 
indifference.  He  at  once  resolved  to  patronize  his  brother,  the 
Duke  of  York,  and  found  in  him  a  truer  friend.  The  duchess, 
who  had  a  particular  fondness  for  dogs,  of  which  she  is  said  to 
have  kept  no  fewer,  at  one  time,  than  a  hundred,  added  the 
puppy  Brummell  to  the  list,  and  treated  him  with  a  kindness 
in  which  little  condescension  was  mixed.  But  neither  impu- 
dence nor  the  blood-royal  can  keep  a  man  out  of  debt,  especial- 
ly when  he  plays.  The  Beau  got  deeper  and  deeper  into  the 
difficulty,  and  at  last  some  mysterious  quarrel  about  money 
with  a  gentleman  who  thenceforward  went  by  the  name  of 
Dick  the  Dandy-killer,  obliged  him  to  think  of  place  and  pov- 
erty in  another  land.  He  looked  in  vain  for  aid,  and  among 
others  Scrope  Davies  was  written  to  to  lend  him  "  two  hund- 
red," "because  his  money  was  all  in  the  three  per  cents." 
Scrope  replied  laconically — 

"  MY  DEAR  GEORGE, 

"  It  is  very  unfortunate,  but  my  money  is  all  in  the  three 
per  cents.  Yours,  S.  DAVIES." 

It  was  the  last  attempt.  The  Beau  went  to  the  opera,  as 
usual,  and  drove  away  from  it  clear  off  to  Dover,  whence  the 
packet  took  him  to  safety  and  slovenliness  in  the  ancient  town 

*  Another  version,  given  by  Captain  Jesse,  represents  this  to  have  taken 
place  at  a  ball  given  at  the  Argyle  Rooms  in  July,  1813,  by  Lord  Alvanley, 
Sir  Henry  Mildmay,  Mr.  Pierrepoint,  and  Mr.  Brummell. 


398  THE   BLACK-MAIL    OP   CALAIS. 

of  Calais.  His  few  effects  were  sold  after  his  departure. 
Porcelain,  buhl,  a  drawing  or  two,  double-barreled  Mantons 
(probably  never  used),  plenty  of  old  wine,  linen,  furniture,  and 
a  few  well-bound  books,  were  the  Beau's  assets.  His  debts 
were  with  half  the  chief  tradesmen  of  the  West  End  and  a 
large  number  of  his  personal  friends. 

The  climax  is  reached:  henceforth  Master  George  Bryan 
Brummell  goes  rapidly  and  gracefully  down  the  hill  of  life. 

The  position  of  a  Calais  beggar  was  by  no  means  a  bad  one, 
if  the  reduced  individual  had  any  claim  whatever  to  distinc- 
tion. A  black-mail  was  sedulously  levied  by  the  outcasts  and 
exiles  of  that  town  on  every  Englishman  who  passed  through 
it;  and  in  those  days  it  was  customary  to  pass  some  short 
time  in  this  entrance  of  France.  The  English  "residents" 
were  always  on  the  look-out,  generally  crowding  round  the 
packet-boat,  and  the  new  arrival  was  sure  to  be  accosted  by 
some  old  and  attached  friend,  who  had  not  seen  him  for  years. 
Just  as  Buttons,  who  is  always  breaking  the  plates  and  tum- 
blers, has  the  invariable  mode  of  accounting  for  his  careless- 
ness, "they  fell  apart,  sir,  in  my  'ands!"  so  these  expatriated 
Britons  had  always  a  tale  of  confidence  misplaced — security 
for  a  bond — bail  for  a  delinquent,  or  in  short  any  hard  case, 
which  compelled  them,  much  against  their  wills,  to  remain 
"  for  a  period"  on  the  shores  of  France.  To  such  men,  whom 
you  had  known  in  seven-guinea  waistcoats  at  White's  and 
Watier's,  and  found  in  seven-shilling  coats  on  the  Calais  pier, 
it  was  impossible  to  refuse  your  five-pound  note,  and  in  time 
the  black-mail  of  Calais  came  to  be  reckoned  among  the  estab- 
lished expenses  of  a  Continental  tour. 

Brummell  was  a  distinguished  beggar  of  this  description, 
and  managed  so  adroitly  that  the  new  arrivals  thought  them- 
selves obliged  by  Mr.  Brummell's  acceptance  of  their  dona- 
tions. The  man  who  could  not  eat  cabbages,  drive  in  a  hack- 
ney-coach, or  wear  less  than  three  shirts  a  day,  was  now  sup- 
ported by  voluntary  contributions,  and  did  not  see  any  thing 
derogatory  to  a  gentleman  in  their  acceptance.  If  Brummell 
had  now  turned  his  talents  to  account ;  if  he  had  practiced  his 
painting,  in  which  he  was  not  altogether  despicable ;  or  his 
poetry,  in  which  he  had  already  had  some  trifling  success :  if 
he  had  even  engaged  himself  as  a  waiter  at  Quillacq's,  or  given 
lessons  in  the  art  of  deportment,  his  fine  friends  from  town 
might  have  cut  him,  but  posterity  would  have  withheld  its 
blame.  He  was  a  beggar  of  the  merriest  kind.  While  he 
wrote  letters  to  friends  in  England,  asking  for  remittances, 
and  describing  his  wretched  condition  on  a  bed  of  straw  and 
eating  bran  bread,  he  had  a  good  barrel  of  Dorchester  ale  in 


GEORGE  THE  GREATER  AND  GEORGE  THE  LESS.     399 

his  lodgings,  his  usual  glass  of  maraschino,  and  his  bottle  of 
claret  after  dinner ;  and  though  living  on  charity,  could  order 
new  snuffboxes  to  add  to  his  collection,  and  new  knick-knacks 
to  adorn  his  room.  There  can  be  no  pity  for  such  a  man,  and 
we  have  no  pity  for  him,  whatever  the  rest  of  the  world  may 
feel. 

Nothing  can  be  more  contemptible  than  the  gradual  down- 
fall of  the  broken  Beau.  Yet,  if  it  were  doubted  that  his  soul 
ever  rose  above  the  collar  of  a  coat  or  the  brim  of  a  hat,  his 
letters  to  Mr.  Raikes  in  the  time  of  his  poverty  would  settle 
the  question.  "  I  heard  of  you  the  other  day  in  a  waistcoat 
that  does  you  considerable  credit,  spick-and-span  from  Paris, 
a  broad  stripe,  salmon  color,  and  cramoise.  Don't  let  them 
laugh  you  into  a  relapse — into  the  Gothic — as  that  of  your  for- 
mer English  simplicity."  He  speaks  of  the  army  of  occupa- 
tion as  "  rascals  in  red  coats  waiting  for  embarkation."  "  En- 
glish education,"  he  says  in  another  letter,  "may  be  all  very 
well  to  instruct  the  hemming  of  handkerchiefs,  and  the  un- 
gainly romps  of  a  country  dance,  but  nothing  else ;  and  it 
would  be  a  poor  consolation  to  your  declining  years  to  see 
your  daughters  come  into  the  room  upon  their  elbows,  and  to 
find  their  accomplishments  limited  to  broad  native  phraseolo- 
gy in  conversation,  or  thumping  the  c  Woodpecker'  upon  a  dis- 
cordant spinet."  And  he  proceeds  to  recommend  "  a  good 
French  formation  of  manners,"  and  so  forth. 

Nor  did  he  display  any  of  that  dignity  and  self-respect  which 
are  generally  supposed  to  mark  the  "gentleman."  When  his 
late  friend  and  foe,  by  this  time  a  king,  passed  through  Calais, 
the  Beau,  broken  in  every  sense,  had  not  pride  enough  to  keep 
out  of  his  way.  Many  stories  are  told  of  the  manner  in  which 
he  pressed  himself  into  George  IV.'s  notice,  but  the  various 
legends  mostly  turn  upon  a  certain  snuff-box.  According  to 
one  quite  as  reliable  as  any  other,  the  Prince  and  the  Beau 
had  in  their  days  of  amity  intended  to  exchange  snuff-boxes, 
and  George  the  Greater  had  given  George  the  Less  an  order 
on  his  jeweler  for  a  tabatiere  with  his  portrait  on  the  top.  On 
their  quarrel  this  order  was,  with  very  bad  taste,  rescinded, 
although  Brummell's  snuff-box  had  already  passed  into  the 
Prince's  hands  and  had  not  been  returned.  It  is  said  that  the 
Beau  employed  a  friend  to  remind  the  king  of  this  agreement, 
and  ask  for  his  box ;  to  whom  the  latter  said  that  the  story 
was  all  nonsense,  and  that  he  supposed  "  the  poor  devil," 
meaning  his  late  intimate  friend,  wanted  £100  and  should 
have  it.  However,  it  is  doubtful  if  the  money  ever  reached 
the  "  poor  devil."  The  story  does  not  tell  over  well,  for  what- 
ever George  IV.'s  failings  and  faults,  he  seems  to  have  had  a 


400  DOWN  THE   HILL   OF  LIFE. 

certain  amount  of  good-nature,  if  not  absolutely  of  good  heart, 
at  least  sufficient  sense  of  what  became  a  prince,  to  prevent  his 
doing  so  shabby  an  act,  though  he  may  have  defrauded  a  hund- 
red tradesmen.  In  these  days  there  were  such  things  as  "  debts 
of  honor,"  and  they  were  punctiliously  attended  to.  There 
are,  as  we  have  said,  various  versions  of  this  story,  but  all  tend 
to  show  that  Brummell  courted  the  notice  of  his  late  master 
and  patron  on  his  way  through  the  place  of  his  exile ;  and  it  is 
not  remarkable  in  a  man  who  borrowed  so  freely  from  all  his 
acquaintances,  and  who  was,  in  fact,  in  such  a  state  of  depend- 
ence on  their  liberality. 

Brummell  made  one  grand  mistake  in  his  career  as  a  Beau : 
he  outlived  himself.  For  some  twenty-four  years  he  survived 
his  flight  from  England,  to  which  country  he  never  returned. 
For  a  time  he  was  an  assiduous  writer  of  begging-letters  and 
the  plague  of  his  friends.  At  length  he  obtained  the  appoint- 
ment of  consul  at  the  good  old  Norman  town  of  Caen.  This 
was  almost  a  sinecure,  and  the  Beau  took  care  to  keep  it  so. 
But  no  one  can  account  for  the  extraordinary  step  he  took  soon 
after  entering  on  his  consular  duties.  He  wrote  to  Lord  Palm- 
erston,  stating  that  there  were  no  duties  attached  to  the  post, 
and  recommending  its  abolition.  This  act  of  suicide  is  partly 
explained  by  a  supposed  desire  to  be  appointed  to  some  more 
lively  and  more  lucrative  consulate;  but  in  this  the  Beau  was 
mistaken.  The  consulate  at  Caen  was  vacated  in  accordance 
with  his  suggestion,  and  Brummell  was  left  penniless,  in  debt, 
and  to  shift  for  himself.  With  the  aid  of  an  English  trades- 
man, half  grocer,  half  banker,  he  managed  to  get  through  a 
period  of  his  poverty,  but  could  not  long  subsist  in  this  way, 
and  the  punishment  of  his  vanity  and  extravagance  came  at 
last  in  his  old  age.  A  term  of  existence  in  prison  did  not  cure 
him,  and  when  he  was  liberated  he  again  resumed  his  primrose 
gloves,  his  Eau  de  Cologne,  and  his  patent  vernis  for  his  boots, 
though  at  that  time  literally  supported  by  his  friends  with  an 
allowance  of  £120  per  annum.  In  the  old  days  of  Caen  life 
this  would  have  been  equal  to  £300  a  year  in  England,  and 
certainly  quite  enough  for  any  bachelor ;  but  the  Beau  was 
really  a  fool.  For  whom,  for  what  should  he  dress  and  polish 
his  boots  at  such  a  quiet  place  as  Caen  ?  Yet  he  continued  to 
do  so,  and  to  run  into  debt  for  the  polish.  When  he  confessed 
to  having,  "  so  help  him  Heaven,"  not  four  francs  in  the  world, 
he  was  ordering  this  vernis  de  Quiton,  at  five  francs  a  bottle, 
from  Paris,  and  calling  the  provider  of  it  "  a  scoundrel,"  be- 
cause he  ventured  to  ask  for  his  money.  What  foppery,  what 
folly  was  all  this !  How  truly  worthy  of  the  man  who  built 
his  fame  on  the  reputation  of  a  coat !  Terrible  indeed  was  the 


A   MISEEABLE   OLD  AGE.  401 

hardship  that  followed  his  extravagance ;  he  was  actually  com- 
pelled to  exchange  his  white  for  a  black  cravat.  Poor  mar- 
tyr !  after  such  a  trial  it  is  impossible  to  be  hard  upon  him. 
So,  too,  the  man  who  sent  repeated  begging-letters  to  the  En- 
glish grocer,  Armstrong,  threw  out  of  window  a  new  dressing- 
gown  because  it  was  not  of  the  pattern  he  wished  to  have. 

Retribution  for  all  this  folly  came  in  time.  His  mind  went 
even  before  his  health.  k  Though  only  some  sixty  years  of  age, 
almost  the  bloom  of  some  men's  life,  he  lost  his  memory  and 
his  powers  of  attention.  His  old  ill-manners  became  positive- 
ly bad  manners.  When  feasted  and  feted,  he  could  find  noth- 
ing better  to  say  than  "  What  a  half-starved  turkey !"  At  last 
the  Beau  was  reduced  to  the  level  of  that  slovenliness  which 
he  had  considered  as  the  next  step  to  perdition.  Reduced  to 
one  pair  of  trowsers,  he  had  to  remain  in  bed  till  they  were 
mended.  He  grew  indifferent  to  his  personal  appearance,  the 
surest  sign  of  decay.  Driveling,  wretched,  in  debt,  an  object 
of  contempt  to  all  honest  men,  he  dragged  on  a  miserable  ex- 
istence. Still  with  his  boots  in  holes,  and  all  the  honor  of  beau- 
dom  gone  forever,  he  clung  to  the  last  to  his  Eau  de  Cologne, 
and  some  few  other  luxuries,  and  went  down,  a  fool  and  a  fop, 
to  the  grave.  To  indulge  his  silly  tastes  he  had  to  part  with 
one  piece  of  property  after  another ;  and  at  length  he  was  left 
with,  little  else  than  the  locks  of  hair  of  which  he  had  once 
boasted. 

I  remember  a  story  of  a  laborer  and  his  dying  wife.  The 
poor  woman  was  breathing  her  last  wishes.  "And,  I  say, 
William,  you'll  see  the  ould  sow  don't  kill  her  young  uns  ?" 
"  Ay,  ay,  wife,  set  thee  good."  "  And,  I  say,  William,  you'll 
see  Lizzy  goes  to  schule  reg'lar?"  "Ay,  ay,  wife,  set  thee 
good."  "  And,  I  say,  William,  you'll  see  Tommy's  breeches 
is  mended  against  he  goes  to  schule  again  ?"  "  Ay,  ay,  wife, 
set  thee  good."  "  And,  I  say,  William,  you'll  see  I'm  laid 
proper  in  the  yard ?"  William  grew  impatient.  "Now  never 
thee  mind  them  things,  wife,  I'll  see  to  'em  all,  you  just  go 
011  with  your  dying."  No  doubt  Brummell's  friends  heartily 
wished  that  he  would  go  on  with  his  dying,  for  he  had  already 
lived  too  long ;  but  he  would  live  on.  He  is  described  in  his 
last  days  as  a  miserable,  slovenly,  half-witted  old  creature, 
creeping  about  to  the  houses  of  a  few  friends  he  retained  or 
who  were  kind  enough  to  notice  him  still,  jeered  at  by  the 
gamins,  and  remarkable  now,  not  for  the  cleanliness,  but  the 
filthiness  and  raggedness  of  his  attire. 

Poor  old  fool !  one  can  not  but  pity  him,  when  wretched, 
friendless,  and  miserable  as  he  was,  we  find  him,  still  graceful, 
in  a  poor  cafe  near  the  Place  Royale,  taking  his  cup  of  coffee, 


402  IN  THE   HOSPICE   DU   BON   SAUVEUR. 

and  when  asked  for  the  amount  of  his  bill,  answering  very 
vaguely,  "  Oui,  Madame,  a  la  pleine  lune,  a  la  pleine  lune." 

The  drivelings  of  old  age  are  no  fit  subject  for  ridicule,  yet 
in  the  case  of  a  man  who  had  sneered  so  freely  at  his  fellow- 
creatures,  they  may  afford  a  useful  lesson.  One  of  his  fancies 
was  to  give  imaginary  parties,  when  his  tallow  dips  were  all 
set  alight  and  his  servant  announced  with  proper  decorum, 
"The  Duchess  of  Devonshire,"  "Lord^Alvanley,"  "Mr.  Sheri- 
dan," or  whom  not.  The  poor  old  idiot  received  the  imagin- 
ary visitors  with  the  old  bow,  and  talked  to  them  in  the  old 
strain,  till  his  servant  announced  their  imaginary  carriages, 
and  he  was  put  driveling  to  bed.  At  last  the  idiocy  became 
mania.  He  burnt  his  books,  his  relics,  his  tokens/  He  ate 
enormously,  and  the  man  who  had  looked  upon  beer  as  the  ne 
plus  ultra  of  vulgarity,  was  glad  to  imagine  it  champagne. 
Let  us  not  follow  the  poor  maniac  through  his  wanderings. 
Rather  let  us  throw  a  veil  over  all  his  driveling  wretchedness, 
and  find  him  at  his  last  gasp,  when  coat  and  collar,  hat  and 
brim,  were  all  forgotten,  when  the  man  who  had  worn  three 
shirts  a  day  was  content  to  change  his  linen  once  a  month. 
What  a  lesson,  what  a  warning !  If  Brummell  had  come  to 
this  pass  in  England,  it  is  hard  to  say  how  and  where  he  would 
have  died.  He  was  now  utterly  penniless,  and  had  no  pros- 
pect of  receiving  any  remittances.  It  was  determined  to  re- 
move him  to  the  Hospice  du  Bon  Sauveur,  a  Maison  de  Cha- 
rite,  where  he  would  be  well  cared  for  at  no  expense.  The 
mania  of  the  poor  creature  took,  as  ever,  the  turn  of  external 
preparation.  When  the  landlord  of  his  inn  entered  to  try  and 
induce  him  to  go,  he  found  him  with  his  wig  on  his  knee,  his 
shaving  apparatus  by  his  side,  and  the  quondam  beau  deeply 
interested  in  lathering  the  peruke  as  a  preliminary  to  shearing 
it.  He  resisted  every  proposal  to  move,  and  was  carried  down 
stairs  kicking  and  shrieking.  Once  lodged  in  the  Hospice,  he 
was  treated  by  the  soeurs  de  charite  with  the  greatest  kind- 
ness and  consideration.  An  attempt  was  made  to  recall  him 
to  a  sense  of  his  future  peril,  that  he  might  at  least  die  in  a 
more  religious  mood  than  he  had  lived;  but  in  vain.  It  is  not 
for  us,  erring  and  sinful  as  wre  are,  to  judge  any  fellow-crea- 
ture ;  but  perhaps  poor  Brummell  was  the  last  man  to  whom 
religion  had  a  meaning.  His  heart  was  good ;  his  sins  were 
more  those  of  vanity  than  those  of  hate;  it  may  be  that  they 
are  regarded  mercifully  where  the  fund  of  mercy  is  unbound- 
ed. God  grant  that  they  may  be  so  ;  or  who  of  us  would  es- 
cape ?  None  but  devils  will  triumph  over  the  death  of  any 
man  in  sin.  Men  are  not  devils ;  they  must  and  will  always 
feel  for  their  fellow-men,  let  them  die  as  they  will.  No  doubt 


O    YOUNG   MEN    OP  THIS   AGE,  BE   WARNED !  403 

Bruramell  was  a  fool — a  fool  of  the  first  water — but  that  he 
was  equally  a  knave  is  not  so  certain.  Let  it  never  be  certain 
to  blind  man,  who  can  not  read  the  heart,  that  any  man  is  a 
knave.  He  died  on  the  30th  of  March,  1840,  only  twenty 
years  ago,  and  so  the  last  of  the  Beaux  passed  away.  People 
have  claimed,  indeed,  for  D'Orsay,  the  honor  of  Brummell's 
descending  mantle,  but  D'Orsay  was  not  strictly  a  beau,  for 
he  had  other  and  higher  tastes  than  mere  dress.  It  has  never 
been  advanced  that  Brummell's  heart  was  bad,  in  spite  of  his 
many  faults.  Vanity  did  all.  Vanitas  vanitatum.  O  young 
men  of  this  age,  be  warned  by  a  Beau,  and  flee  his  doubtful 
reputation !  Peace  then  to  the  coat-thinker.  Peace  to  all — 
to  the  worst.  Let  us  look  within  and  not  judge.  It  is  enough 
that  we  are  not  tried  in  the  same  balance. 


THEODORE  EDWARD  HOOK, 

IF  it  be  difficult  to  say  what  wit  is,  it  is  well-nigh  as  hard  to 
pronounce  what  is  not  wit.  In  a  sad  world,  mirth  hath  its  full 
honor,  let  it  come  in  rags  or  in  purple  raiment.  The  age  that 
patronizes  a  "  Punch"  every  Saturday,  and  a  pantomime  every 
Christmas,  has  no  right  to  complain  if  it  finds  itself  barren  of 
wits,  while  a  rival  age  has  brought  forth  her  dozens.  Mirth 
is,  no  doubt,  very  good.  We  would  see  more,  not  less,  of  it  in 
this  unmirthful  land.  We  would  fain  imagine  the  shrunken- 
cheeked  factory-girl  singing  to  herself  a  happy  burden,  as  she 
shifts  the  loom — the  burden  of  her  life — and  fain  believe  that 
the  voice  was  innocent  as  the  skylark's.  But  if  it  be  not  so — 
and  we  know  it  is  not  so — shall  we  quarrel  with  any  one  who 
tries  to  give  the  poor  care-worn,  money-singing  public  a  little 
laughter  for  a  few  pence  ?  No,  truly ;  but  it  does  not  follow 
that  a  man  who  raises  a  titter  is,  of  necessity,  a  wit.  The  next 
age,  perchance,  will  write  a  book  of  "  Wits  and  Beaux,"  in 
which  Mr.  Douglas  Jerrold,  Mr.  Mark  Lemon,  and  so  on,  will 
represent  the  wit  of  this  passing  day ;  and  that  future  age  will 
not  ask  so  nicely  what  wit  is,  and  not  look  for  that  last  solved 
of  riddles,  its  definition. 

Hook  has  been,  by  common  consent,  placed  at  the  head  of 
modern  wits.  When  kings  were  kings,  they  bullied,  beat,  and 
browbeat  their  jesters.  Now  and  then  they  treated  them  to 
a  few  years  in  the  Tower  for  a  little  extra  impudence.  Now 
that  the  people  are  sovereign,  the  jester  fares  better — nay,  too 
well.  His  books  or  his  bon-mots  are  read  with  zest  and  grins ; 
he  is  invited  to  his  Grace's  and  implored  to  my  Lord's ;  he  is 
waited  for,  watched,  pampered  like  a  small  Grand  Llama,  and, 
in  one  sentence,  the  greater  the  fool,  the  more  fools  he  makes. 

If  Theodore  Hook  had  lived  in  the  stirring  days  of  King 
Henry  VIII.,  of  blessed  (?)  memory,  he  would  have  sent 
Messrs.  Patch  and  Co.  sharply  to  the  right-about,  and  been 
presented  with  the  caps  and  bells  after  his  first  comic  song. 
No  doubt  he  was  a  jester,  a  fool  in  many  senses,  though  he 
did  not,  like  Solomon's  fool,  "  say  in  his  heart"  very  much. 
He  jested  away  even  the  practicals  of  life,  jested  himself  into 
disgrace,  into  prison,  into  contempt,  into  the  basest  employ- 
ment— that  of  a  libeler  tacked  on  to  a  party.  He  was  a  mim- 
ic, too,  to  whom  none  could  send  a  challenge ;  an  improvisa- 


406  WHAT   COLERIDGE    SAID  OF    HOOK. 

tore,  who  beat  Italians,  Tyroleans,  and  Styrians  hollow,  sir, 
hollow.  And  lastly — oh!  shame  of  the  shuffle-tongued — he 
was,  too,  a  punster.  Yes,  a  glorier  in  puns,  a  maker  of  pun 
upon  pun,  a  man  whose  whole  wit  ran  into  a  pun  as  readily  as 
water  rushes  into  a  hollow,  who  could  not  keep  out  of  a  pun, 
let  him  loathe  it  or  not,  and  who  made  some  of  the  best  and 
some  of  the  worst  on  record,  but  still  puns. 

If  he  was  a  wit  withal,  it  was  malgre  soi,  for  fun,  not  wit, 
was  his  "  aspiration."  Yet  the  world  calls  him  a  wit,  and  he 
has  a  claim  to  his  niche.  There  were,  it  is  true,  many  a  man 
in  his  own  set  who  had  more  real  wit.  There  were  James 
Smith,  Thomas  Ingoldsby,  Tom  Hill,  and  others.  Out  of  his 
set,  but  of  his  time,  there  was  Sydney  Smith,  ten  times  more  a 
wit ;  but  Theodore  could  amuse,  Theodore  could  astonish, 
Theodore  could  be  at  home  any  where ;  he  had  all  the  impu- 
dence, all  the  readiness,  all  the  indifference  of  a  jester,  and  a 
jester  he  was. 

Let  any  one  look  at  his  portrait,  and  he  will  doubt  if  this  be 
the  king's  jester,  painted  by  Holbein,  or  Mr.  Theodore  Hook, 
painted  by  Eddis.  The  short,  thick  nose,  the  long  upper  lip, 
the  sensual,  whimsical  mouth,  the  twinkling  eyes,  all  belong 
to  the  regular  maker  of  fun.  Hook  was  a  certificated  jester, 
with  a  lenient  society  to  hear  and  applaud  him,  instead  of  an 
irritable  tyrant  to  keep  him  in  order :  and  he  filled  his  post 
well.  Whether  he  was  more  than  a  jester  may  well  be  doubt- 
ed ;  yet  Coleridge,  when  he  heard  him,  said,  "  I  have  before 
in  my  time  met  with  men  of  admirable  promptitude  of  intel- 
lectual power  and  play  of  wit,  which,  as  Stillingfleet  says, 

"  'The  rays  of  wit  gild  wheresoe'er  they  strike,' 

but  I  never  could  have  conceived  such  readiness  of  mind  and 
resources  qf  genius  to  be  poured  out  on  the  mere  subject  and 
impulse  of  the  moment."  The  poet  was  wrong  in  one  respect. 
Genius  can  in  no  sense  be  applied  to  Hook,  though  readiness 
was  his  chief  charm. 

The  famous  Theodore  was  born  in  the  same  year  as  Byron, 
1788,  the  one  on  the  22d  of  January,  the  other  on  the  22d 
of  September ;  so  the  poet  was  only  nine  months  his  senior. 
Hook,  like  many  other  wits,  was  a  second  son.  Ladies  of  sixty 
or  seventy  well  remember  the  name  of  Hook  as  that  which  ac- 
companied their  earliest  miseries.  It  was  in  learning  Hook's 
exercises,  or  primers,  or  whatever  they  were  called,  that  they 
first  had  their  fingers  slapped  over  the  pianoforte.  The  father 
of  Theodore,  no  doubt,  was  the  unwitting  cause  of  much  un- 
happiness  to  many  a  young  lady  in  her  teens.  Hook  pere  was 
an  organist  at  Norwich.  He  came  up  to  town,  and  was  en- 


HOOK'S  FAMILY.  407 

gaged  at  Marylebone  Gardens  and  at  Vauxhall ;  so  that  Theo- 
dore had  no  excuse  for  being  of  decidedly  plebeian  origin, 
and,  Tory  as  he  was,  he  was  not  fool  enough  to  aspire  to  pa- 
tricianism. 

Theodore's  family  was,  in  real  fact,  Theodore  himself.  He 
made  the  name  what  it  is,  and  raised  himself  to  the  position 
he  at  one  time  held.  Yet  he  had  a  brother  whose  claims  to 
celebrity  are  not  altogether  ancillary.  James  Hook  was  fifteen 
years  older  than  Theodore.  After  leaving  Westminster  School, 
he  was  sent  to  immortal  Skimmery  (St.  Mary's  Hall),  Oxford, 
which  has  fostered  so  many  great  men — and  spoiled  them.  He 
was  advanced  in  the  Church  from  one  preferment  to  another, 
and  ultimately  became  Dean  of  Worcester.  The  character  of 
the  reverend  gentleman  is  pretty  well  known,  but  it  is  unnec- 
essary here  to  go  into  it  farther.  He  is  only  mentioned  as 
Theodore's  brother  in  this  sketch.*  He  was  a  dabbler  in  lit- 
erature, like  his  brother,  but  scarcely  to  the  same  extent  a  dab- 
bler in  wit. 

The  younger  son  of  "  Hook's  Exercises"  developed  early 
enough  a  taste  for  ingenious  lying — so  much  admired  in  his 
predecessor,  Sheridan.  He  "  fancied  himself"  a  genius,  and 
therefore,  from  school-age,  not  amenable  to  the  common  laws 
of  ordinary  men.  Frequenters  of  the  now  fashionable  prize- 
ring — thanks  to  two  brutes  who  have  brought  that  degraded 
pastime  into  prominent  notice — will  hear  a  great  deal  about  a 
man  "  fancying  himself."  It  is  common  slang,  and  needs  little 
explanation.  Hook  "fancied  himself"  from  an  early  period, 
and  continued  to  "fancy  himself,"  in  spite  of  repeated  dis- 
graces, till  a  very  mature  age.  At  Harrow,  he  was  the  con- 
temporary, but  scarcely  the  friend,  of  Lord  Byron.  No  two 
characters  could  have  been  more  unlike.  Every  one  knows, 
more  or  less,  what  Byron's  was ;  it  need  only  be  said  that 
Hook's  was  the  reverse  of  it  in  every  respect.  Byron  felt 
where  Hook  laughed.  Byron  was  morbid  where  Hook  was 
gay.  Byron  abjured  with  disgust  the  social  vices  to  which  he 
was  introduced ;  Hook  fell  in  with  them.  Byron  indulged  in 
vice  in  a  romantic  way ;  Hook  in  the  coarsest.  There  is  some 
excuse  for  Byron,  much  as  he  has  been  blamed.  There  is  lit- 
tle or  no  excuse  for  Hook,  much  as  his  faults  have  been  palli- 
ated. The  fact  is  that  goodness  of  heart  will  soften,  in  men's 
minds,  any  or  all  misdemeanors.  Hook,  in  spite  of  many  vul- 

far  witticisms  and  cruel  jokes,  seems  to  have  had  a  really  good 
eart. 
I  have  it  on  the  authority  of  one  of  Hook's  most  intimate 

*  Dr.  James  Hook,  Dean  of  Worcester,  was  father  to  Dr.  Walter  Farquhar 
Hook,  now  the  excellent  Dean  of  Chichester,  late  Vicar  of  Leeds. 


408  VERSATILITY. 

friends,  that  he  was  capable  of  any  act  of  kindness,  and  by 
way  of  instance  of  his  goodness  of  heart,  I  am  told  by  the  same 
person  that  he  on  one  occasion  quitted  all  his  town  amuse- 
ments to  solace  the  spirit  of  a  friend  in  the  country  who  was 
in  serious  trouble.  I,  of  course,  refrain  from  giving  names ; 
but  the  same  person  informs  me  that  much  of  his  time  was 
devoted,  in  a  like  manner,  to  relieving,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
anxiety  of  his  friends,  often,  indeed,  arising  from  his  own  care- 
lessness. It  is  due  to  Hook  to  make  this  impartial  statement 
before  entering  on  a  sketch  of  his  "  Sayings  and  Doings," 
which  must  necessarily  leave  the  impression  that  he  was  a 
heartless  man. 

Old  Hook,  the  father,  soon  perceived  the  value  of  his  son's 
talents ;  and,  determined  to  turn  them  to  account,  encouraged 
his  natural  inclination  to  song- writing.  At  the  age  of  sixteen 
Theodore  wrote  a  kind  of  comic  opera,  to  which  his  father 
supplied  the  music.  This  was  called  "  The  Soldier's  Return." 
It  was  followed  by  others,  and  young  Hook,  not  yet  out  of  his 
teens,  managed  to  keep  a  Drury  Lane  audience  alive,  as  well 
as  himself  and  family.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
Liston  and  Mathews  could  make  almost  any  piece  amusing. 
The  young  author  was  introduced  behind  the  scenes  through 
his  father's  connection  with  the  theatre,  and  often  played  the 
fool  under  the  stage  while  others  were  playing  it  for  him  above 
it,  practical  jokes  being  a  passion  with  him  which  he  developed 
thus  early.  These  tricks  were  not  always  very  good-natured, 
which  may  be  said  of  many  of  his  jokes  out  of  the  theatre. 

He  soon  showed  evidence  of  another  talent,  that  of  acting 
as  well  as  writing  pieces.  Assurance  was  one  of  the  main 
features  of  his  character,  and  to  it  he  owed  his  success  in  soci- 
ety ;  but  it  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that  on  his  first  appearance 
before  an  audience  he  entirely  lost  all  his  nerve,  turned  pale, 
and  could  scarcely  utter  a  syllable.  He  rapidly  recovered, 
however,  and  from  this  time  became  a  favorite  performer  in 
private  theatricals,  in  which  he  was  supported  by  Mathews 
and  Mrs.  Mathews,  and  some  amateurs  who  were  almost  equal 
to  any  professional  actors.  His  attempts  were,  of  course, 
chiefly  in  broad  farce  and  roaring  burlesque,  in  which  his  comic 
face,  with  its  look  of  mock  gravity,  and  the  twinkle  of  the  eyes, 
itself  excited  roars  of  laughter.  Whether  he  would  have  suc- 
ceeded as  well  in  sober  comedy  or  upon  public  boards  may 
well  be  doubted.  Probably  he  would  not  have  given  to  the 
profession  that  careful  attention  and  entire  devotion  which 
are  necessary  to  bring  forward  properly  the  highest  natural 
talents.  It  is  said  that  for  a  long  time  he  was  anxious  to  take 
to  the  stage  as  a  profession,  but,  perhaps — as  the  event  seems 


VARIETIES    OF    HOAXING.  409 

to  show — unfortunately  for  him,  he  was  dissuaded  from  what 
his  friends  must  have  thought  a  very  rash  step,  and  in  after 
years  he  took  a  violent  dislike  to  the  profession.  Certainly 
the  stage  could  not  have  offered  more  temptations  than  did  the 
society  in  which  he  afterward  mixed  ;  and  perhaps,  under  any 
circumstances,  Hook,  whose  moral  education  had  been  neglect- 
ed, and  whose  principles  were  never  very  good,  would  have 
lived  a  life  more  or  less  vicious,  though  he  might  not  have  died 
as  he  did. 

Hook,  however,  was  not  long  in  coming  very  prominently 
before  the  public  in  another  capacity.  Of  all  stories  told  about 
him,  none  are  more  common  or  more  popular  than  those  which 
relate  to  his  practical  jokes  and  hoaxes.  Thank  Heaven,  the 
world  no  longer  sees  amusement  in  the  misery  of  others,  and 
the  fashion  of  such  clever  performance  is  gone  out.  It  is  fair, 
however,  to  premise,  that  while  the  cleverest  of  Hook's  hoax- 
es were  of  a  victimizing  character,  a  large  number  were  just 
the  reverse,  and  his  admirers  affirm,  not  without  some  reason, 
that  when  he  had  got  a  dinner  out  of  a  person  he  did  not  know, 
by  an  ingenious  lie,  admirably  supported,  he  fully  paid  for  it  in 
the  amusement  he  afforded  his  host  and  the  ringing  metal  of 
his  wit.  As  we  have  all  been  boys — except  those  that  were 
girls — and  not  all  of  us  very  good  boys,  we  can  appreciate  that 
passion  for  robbery  which  began  with  orchards  and  passed  on 
to  knockers.  It  is  difficult  to  sober  middle-age  to  imagine  what 
entertainment  there  can  be  in  that  breach  of  the  eighth  com- 
mandment, which  is  generally  regarded  as  innocent.  As  Sher- 
idan swindled  in  fun,  so  Hook,  as  a  young  man,  robbed  in  fun, 
as  hundreds  of  medical  students  and  others  have  done  before 
and  since.  Hook,  however,  was  a  proficient  in  the  art,  and 
would  have  made  a  successful  "  cracksman"  had  he  been  born 
in  the  Seven  Dials.  He  collected  a  complete  museum  of  knock- 
ers, bell-pulls,  wooden  Highlanders,  barbers'  poles,  and  shop 
signs  of  all  sorts.  On  one  occasion  he  devoted  a  whole  fort- 
night to  the  abstraction  of  a  golden  eagle  over  a  shop  window, 
by  means  of  a  lasso.  A  fellow-dilettante  in  the  art  had  confi- 
dentially informed  him  of  its  whereabouts,  adding  that  he  him- 
self despaired  of  ever  obtaining  it.  At  length  Hook  invited 
his  friend  to  dinner,  and  on  the  removal  of  the  cover  of  what 
was  supposed  to  be  the  joint,  the  work  of  art  appeared  served 
up  and  appropriately  garnished.  Theodore  was  radiant  with 
triumph ;  but  the  friend,  probably  thinking  that  there  ought 
to  be  honor  among  thieves,  was  highly  indignant  at  being  thus 
surpassed. 

Another  achievement  of  this  kind  was  the  robbery  of  a  life- 
sized  Highlander,  who  graced  the  door  of  some  unsuspecting 


410  THE   BLACK-WAFEEED   HOESE. 

tobacconist.  There  was  little  difficulty  in  the  mere  displace- 
ment of  the  figure ;  the  troublesome  part  of  the  business  was 
to  get  the  bare-legged  Celt  home  to  the  museum,  where  prob- 
ably many  a  Liliputian  of  his  race  was  already  awaiting  him. 
A  cloak,  a  hat,  and  Hook's  ready  wit  effected  the  transfer.  The 
first  was  thrown  over  him,  the  second  set  upon  his  bonneted 
head,  and  a  passing  hackney-coach  hailed  by  his  captor,  who, 
before  the  unsuspecting  driver  could  descend,  had  opened  the 
door,  pushed  in  the  prize,  and  whispered  to  Jehu,  "  My  friend 
— very  respectable  man — but  rather  tipsy."  How  he  managed 
to  get  him  out  again  at  the  end  of  the  journey  we  are  not  told. 

Hook  was  soon  a  successful  and  valuable  writer  of  light  pieces 
for  the  stage.  But  farces  do  not  live,  and  few  of  Hook's  are 
now  favorites  with  a  public  which  is  always  athirst  for  some- 
thing new.  The  incidents  of  most  of  the  pieces — many  of  them 
borrowed  from  the  French — excited  laughter  by  their  very  im- 
probability ;  but  the  wit  which  enlivened  them  was  not  of  a 
high  order,  and  Hook,  though  so  much  more  recent  than  Sher- 
idan, has  disappeared  before  him. 

But  his  hoaxes  were  far  more  famous  than  his  collection  of 
curiosities,  and  quite  as  much  to  the  purpose ;  and  the  impu- 
dence he  displayed  in  them  was  only  equaled  by  the  quaint- 
ness  of  the  humor  which  suggested  them.  Who  else  would 
have  ever  thought,  for  instance,  of  covering  a  white  horse  with 
black  wafers,  and  driving  it  in  a  gig  along  a  Welsh  high-road, 
merely  for  the  satisfaction  of  being  stared  at  ?  It  was  almost 
worthy  of  Barnum.  Or  who,  with  less  assurance,  could  have 
played  so  admirably  on  the  credulity  of  a  lady  and  daughters 
fresh  from  the  country,  as  he  did  at  the  trial  of  Lord  Melville? 
The  lady,  who  stood  next  to  him,  was  naturally  anxious  to  un- 
derstand the  proceedings,  and  betrayed  her  ignorance  at  once 
by  a  remark  which  she  made  to  her  daughter  about  the  pro- 
cession of  the  Lords  into  the  House.  When  the  bishops  en- 
tered in  full  episcopal  costume,  she  applied  to  Hook  to  know 
who  were  "  those  gentlemen  ?"  "  Gentlemen,"  quoth  Hook, 
with  charming  simplicity ;  "  ladies,  I  think  you  mean ;  at  any 
rate,  those  are  the  dowager  peeresses  in  their  own  right." 
Question  followed  question  as  the  procession  came  on,  and 
Theodore  indulged  his  fancy  more  and  more.  At  length  the 
Speaker,  in  full  robes,  became  the  subject  of  inquiry.  "And 
pray,  sir,  who  is  that  fine-looking  person  ?"  "  That,  ma'am,  is 
Cardinal  Wolsey,"  was  the  calm  and  audacious  reply.  This 
was  too  much  even  for  Sussex ;  and  the  lady  drew  herself  up 
in  majestic  indignation.  "We  know  better  than  that,  sir," 
she  replied ;  "  Cardinal  Wolsey  has  been  dead  many  a  good 
year."  Theodore  was  unmoved.  "  No  such  thing,  my  dear 


THE   BEKNEKS    STREET   HOAX.  411 

madam,"  he  answered,  without  the  slightest  sign  of  perturba- 
tion :  "  I  know  it  has  been  generally  reported  so  in  the  coun- 
try, but  without  the  slightest  foundation ;  the  newspapers,  you 
know,  will  say  any  thing." 

But  the  hoax  of  hoaxes,  the  one  which  filled  the  papers  of 
the  time  for  several  days,  and  which,  eventually,  made  its  au- 
thor the  very  prince  of  hoaxsters,  if  such  a  term  can  be  admit- 
ted, was  that  of  Berners  Street.  Never,  perhaps,  was  so  much 
trouble  expended,  or  so  much  attention  devoted,  to  so  frivolous 
an  object.  In  Berners  Street  there  lived  an  elderly  lady,  who, 
for  no  reason  that  can  be  ascertained,  had  excited  the  animos- 
ity of  the  young  Theodore,  who  was  then  just  of  age.  Six 
weeks  were  spent  in  preparation,  and  three  persons  were  en- 
gaged in  the  affair.  Letters  were  sent  off  in  every  direction, 
and  Theodore  Hook's  autograph,  if  it  could  have  any  value, 
must  have  been  somewhat  low  in  the  market  at  that  period, 
from  the  number  of  applications  which  he  wrote.  On  the  day 
in  question  he  and  his  accomplices  seated  themselves  at  a  win- 
dow in  Berners  Street,  opposite  to  that  of  the  unfortunate  Mrs. 
Tottenham,  of  No.  54,  and  there  enjoyed  the  fun.  Advertise- 
ments, announcements,  letters,  circulars,  and  what  not,  had  been 
most  freely  issued,  and  were  as  freely  responded  to.  A  score 
of  sweeps,  all "  invited  to  attend  professionally,"  opened  the  ball 
at  a  very  early  hour,  and  claimed  admittance,  in  virtue  of  the 
notice  they  had  received.  The  maid-servant  had  only  just  time 
to  assure  them  that  all  the  chimneys  were  clean,  and  their  serv- 
ices were  not  required,  when  some  dozen  of  coal-carts  drew  up 
as  near  as  possible  to  the  ill-fated  house.  New  protestations, 
new  indignation.  The  grimy  and  irate  coal-heavers  were  still 
being  discoursed  with,  when  a  bevy  of  neat  and  polite  individ- 
uals arrived  from  different  quarters,  bearing  each  under  his  arm 
a  splendid  ten-guinea  wedding-cake.  The  maid  grew  distract- 
ed ;  her  mistress  was  single,  and  had  no  intention  of  doubling 
herself;  there  must  be  some  mistake ;  the  confectioners  were 
dismissed,  in  a  very  different  humor  to  that  with  which  they 
had  come.  But  they  were  scarcely  gone  when  crowds  began 
to  storm  the  house,  all  "  on  business."  Rival  doctors  met  in 
astonishment  and  disgust,  prepared  for  an  accouchement;  un- 
dertakers stared  one  another  mutely  in  the  face,  as  they  depos- 
ited at  the  door  coffins  made  to  order — elm  or  oak — so  many 
feet  and  so  many  inches ;  the  clergymen  of  all  the  neighboring 
parishes,  high  church  or  low  church,  were  ready  to  minister  to 
the  spiritual  wants  of  the  unfortunate  moribund,  but  retired  in 
disgust  when  they  found  that  some  forty  fishmongers  had  been 
engaged  to  purvey  "  cod's  head  and  lobsters"  for  a  person  pro- 
fessing to  be  on  the  brink  of  the  grave. 


412  SUCCESS   OF   THE   SCHEME. 

The  street  now  became  the  scene  of  fearful  distraction.  Fu- 
rious tradesmen  of  every  kind  were  ringing  the  house-bell,  and 
rapping  the  knocker  for  admittance— such,  at  least,  as  could 
press  through  the  crowd  as  far  as  the  house.  Bootmakers  ar- 
rived with  Hessians  and  Wellingtons — "  as  per  order" — or  the 
most  delicate  of  dancing-shoes  for  the  sober  old  lady ;  haber- 
dashers had  brought  the  last  new  thing  in  evening  dress,  "  quite 
the  fashion,"  and  "  very  chaste ;"  hatmakers,  from  Lincoln  and 
Bennett  down  to  the  Hebrew  vendor  in  Marylebone  Lane,  ar- 
rived with  their  crown-pieces ;  butchers'  boys,  on  stout  little 
nags,  could  not  get  near  enough  to  deliver  the  legs  of  mutton 
which  had  been  ordered  ;  the  lumbering  coal-carts  still  "  stop- 
ped the  way."  A  crowd — the  easiest  curiosity  in  the  world  to 
collect — soon  gathered  round  the  motley  mob  of  butchers,  bak- 
ers, candlestick-makers,  and  makers  and  sellers  of  every  thing 
else  that  mortal  can  want ;  the  mob  thronged  the  pavement, 
the  carts  filled  the  road,  and  soon  the  carriages  of  the  noble  of 
the  land  dashed  up  in  all  the  panoply  of  state,  and  a  demand 
was  made  to  clear  the  way  for  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  for  the 
Governor  of  the  Bank,  the  Chairman  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, and  last,  but  oh !  not  least,  the  grandee  whose  successor 
the  originator  of  the  plot  afterward  so  admirably  satirized — 
the  great  Lord  Mayor  himself.  The  consternation,  disgust,  and 
terror  of  the  elderly  female,  the  delight  and  chuckling  of  The- 
odore and  his  accomplices,  seated  at  a  window  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  road,  "  can  be  more  easily  imagined  than  described ;" 
but  what  were  the  feelings  of  tradesmen,  professional  men,  gen- 
tlemen, noblemen,  and  grand  officials,  who  had  been  summon- 
ed from  distant  spots  by  artful  lures  to  No.  54,  and  there  bat- 
tled with  a  crowd  in  vain  only  to  find  that  they  were  hoaxed, 
people  who  had  thus  lost  both  time  and  money,  can  be  neither 
described  nor  imagined.  It  was  not  the  idea  of  the  hoax — 
simple  enough  in  itself— which  was  entitled  to  the  admiration 
accorded  to  ingenuity,  but  its  extent  and  success,  and  the  clev- 
er means  taken  by  the  conspirators  to  insure  the  attendance  of 
every  one  who  ought  not  to  have  been  there.  It  was  only  late 
at  night  that  the  police  succeeded  in  clearing  the  street,  and  the 
dupes  retired,  murmuring  and  vowing  vengeance.  Hook,  how- 
ever, gloried  in  the  exploit,  which  he  thought  "  perfect." 

But  the  hoaxing  dearest  to  Theodore — for  there  was  some- 
thing to  be  gained  by  it — was  that  by  which  he  managed  to 
obtain  a  dinner  when  either  too  hard  up  to  pay  for  one,  or  in 
the  humor  for  a  little  amusement.  No  one  who  has  not  lived 
as  a  bachelor  in  London  and  been  reduced — in  respect  of  coin 
— to  the  sum  of  twopence  halfpenny,  can  tell  how  excellent  a 
strop  is  hunger  to  sharpen  wit  upon.  We  all  know  that 


KITCHEN    EXAMINATIONS.  413 

"Mortals  with  stomachs  can't  live  without  dinner;" 
and  in  Hook's  clay  the  substitute  of  "  heavy  teas"  was  not  in- 
vented. Necessity  is  very  soon  brought  to  bed,  when  a  man 
puts  his  fingers  into  his  pockets,  finds  them  untenanted,  and 
remembers  that  the  only  friend  who  would  consent  to  lend 
him  five  shillings  is  gone  out  of  town ;  and  the  infant,  Inven- 
tion, presently  smiles  into  the  nurse's  face.  But  it  was  no 
uncommon  thing  in  those  days  for  gentlemen  to  invite  them- 
selves where  they  listed,  and  stay  as  long  as  they  liked.  It 
was  only  necessary  for  them  to  make  themselves  really  agree- 
able, and  deceive  their  host  in  some  way  or  other.  Hook's 
friend,  like  little  Tom  Hill,  of  whom  it  was  said  that  he  knew 
every  body's  affairs  far  better  than  they  did  themselves,  was 
famous  for  examining  kitchens  about  the  hour  of  dinner,  and 
quietly  selecting  his  host  according  to  the  odor  of  the  viands. 
It  is  of  him  that  the  old  "  Joe  Miller"  is  told  of  the  "  haunch 
of  venison."  Invited  to  dinner  at  one  house,  he  happens  to 
glance  down  into  the  kitchen  of  the  next,  and  seeing  a  tempt- 
ing haunch  of  venison  on  the  spit,  throws  over  the  inviter,  and 
ingratiates  himself  with  his  neighbor,  who  ends  by  asking  him 
to  stay  to  dinner.  The  fare,  however,  consisted  of  nothing 
more  luxurious  than  an  Irish  stew,  and  the  disappointed  guest 
was  informed  that  he  had  been  "  too  cunning  by  half,"  inas- 
much as  the  venison  belonged  to  his  original  inviter,  and  had 
been  cooked  in  the  house  he  was  in  by  kind  permission,  be- 
cause the  chimney  of  the  owner's  kitchen  smoked. 

The  same  principle  often  actuated  Theodore ;  and,  indeed, 
there  are  few  stories  which  can  be  told  of  this  characteristic 
of  the  great  frolicker,  which  have  not  been  told  a  century  of 
times.  For  instance :  two  young  men  are  strolling,  toward  5 
P.  M.,  hi  the  then  fashionable  neighborhood  of  Soho ;  the  one 
is  Terry,  the  actor — the  other,  Hook,  the  actor,  for  surely  he 
deserves  the  title.  They  pass  a  house,  and  sniff  the  viands 
cooking  underground.  Hook  quietly  announces  his  intention 
of  dining  there.  He  enters,  is  admitted  and  announced  by  the 
servant,  mingles  with  the  company,  and  is  quite  at  home  be- 
fore he  is  perceived  by  the  host.  At  last  the  denouement 
came;  the  dinner-giver  approached  the  stranger,  and  with 
great  politeness  asked  his  name.  "  Smith"  was,  of  course,  the 
reply,  and  reverting  to  mistakes  made  by  servants  in  announc- 
ing, etc.,  Smith  hurried  off  into  an  amusing  story,  to  put  his 
host  in  good-humor.  The  conversation  that  followed  is  taken 
from  "  Ingoldsby :" 

"  But,  really,  my  dear  sir,"  the  host  put  in,  "  I  think  the 
mistake  on  the  present  occasion  does  not  originate  in  the 
source  you  allude  to ;  I  certainly  did  not  anticipate  the  honor 
of  Mr.  Smith's  company  to-day." 


414  THE  WRONG   HOUSE. 

"  No,  I  dare  say  not.  You  said  four  in  your  note,  I  know 
and  it  is  now,  I  see,  a  quarter  past  five ;  but  the  fact  is,  I  hav<s 
been  detained  in  the  City,  as  I  was  going  to  explain — " 

"  Pray,"  said  the  host,  "  whom  do  you  suppose  you  are  ad- 
dressing ?" 

"  Whom  ?  why  Mr.  Thompson,  of  course,  old  friend  of  my 
father.  I  have  not  the  pleasure,  indeed,  of  being  personally 
known  to  you,  but  having  received  your  kind  invitation  yes- 
terday," etc.,  etc. 

"  No,  sir,  my  name  is  not  Thompson,  but  Jones,"  in  highly 
indignant  accents. 

"Jones!"  was  the  well-acted  answer:  "why,  surely,  I  can 
not  have — yes  I  must — good  heaven !  I  see  it  all.  My  dear 
sir,  what  an  unfortunate  blunder;  wrong  house — what  must 
you  think  of  such  an  intrusion?  I  am  really  at  a  loss  for 
words  in  which  to  apologize ;  you  will  permit  me  to  retire  at 
present,  and  to-morrow — " 

"Pray,  don't  think  of  retiring,"  rejoined  the  host,  taken 
with  the  appearance  and  manner  of  the  young  man.  "  Your 
friend's  table  must  have  been  cleared  long  ago,  if,  as  you  say, 
four  was  the  hour  named,  and  I  am  too  happy  to  be  able  to 
offer  you  a  seat  at  mine." 

It  may  be  easily  conceived  that  the  invitation  had  not  to  be 
very  often  repeated,  and  Hook  kept  the  risible  muscles  of  the 
company  upon  the  constant  stretch,  and  paid  for  the  entertain- 
ment in  the  only  coin  with  which  he  was  well  supplied. 

There  was  more  wit,  however,  in  his  visit  to  a  retired  watch- 
maker, who  had  got  from  government  a  premium  of  £10,000 
for  the  best  chronometer.  Hook  was  very  partial  to  journeys 
in  search  of  adventure ;  a  gig,  a  lively  companion,  and  sixpence 
for  the  first  turnpike  being  generally  all  that  was  requisite; 
ingenuity  supplied  the  rest.  It  was  on  one  of  these  excursions 
that  Hook  and  his  friend  found  themselves  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Uxbridge,  with  a  horse  and  a  gig,  and  not  a  sixpence  to  be 
found  in  any  pocket.  Now  a  horse  and  gig  are  property,  but 
of  what  use  is  a  valuable  of  which  you  can  not  dispose  or  de- 
posit at  a  pawnbroker's,  while  you  are  prevented  proceeding 
on  your  way  by  that  neat  white  gate  with  the  neat  white  box 
of  a  house  at  its  side  ?  The  only  alternative  left  to  the  young 
men  was  to  drive  home  again,  dinnerless,  a  distance  of  twenty 
miles,  with  a  jaded  horse,  or  to  find  gratuitous  accommodation 
for  man  and  beast.  In  such  a  case  Sheridan  would  simply 
have  driven  to  the  first  inn,  and  by  persuasion  or  stratagem 
contrived  to  elude  payment,  after  having  drunk  the  best  wine 
and  eaten  the  best  dinner  the  house  could  afford.  Hook  was 
really  more  refined,  as  well  as  bolder  in  his  pillaging. 


THE   HACKNEY-COACH    DEVICE.  415 

The  villa  of  the  retired  tradesman  was  perceived,  and  the 
gig  soon  drew  up  before  the  door.  The  strangers  were  ush- 
ered in  to  the  watchmaker,  and  Hook,  with  great  politeness 
and  a  serious  respectful  look,  addressed  him.  He  said  that  he 
felt  he  was  taking  a  great  liberty — so  he  was — but  that  he 
could  not  pass  the  door  of  a  man  who  had  done  the  country 
so  much  service  by  the  invention  of  what  must  prove  the  most 
useful  and  valuable  instrument,  without  expressing  to  him  the 
gratitude  which  he,  as  a  British  subject  devoted  to  his  coun- 
try's good,  could  not  but  feel  toward  the  inventor,  etc.,  etc. 
The  flattery  was  so  delicately  and  so  seriously  insinuated,  that 
the  worthy  citizen  could  only  receive  it  as  an  honest  expres- 
sion of  sincere  admiration.  The  Rubicon  was  passed ;  a  little 
lively  conversation,  artfully  made  attractive  by  Hook,  follow- 
ed, and  the  watchmaker  was  more  and  more  gratified.  He 
felt,  too,  what  an  honor  it  would  be  to  entertain  two  real  gen- 
tlemen, and  remarking  that  they  were  far  from  town,  brought 
out  at  last  the  longed-for  invitation,  which  was,  of  course,  de- 
clined as  out  of  the  question.  Thereupon  the  old  gentleman 
became  pressing:  the  young  strangers  were  at  last  prevailed 
upon  to  accept  it,  and  very  full  justice  they  did  to  the  larder 
and  cellar  of  the  successful  chronometer-maker. 

There  is  nothing  very  original  in  the  act  of  hoaxing,  and 
Hook's  way  of  getting  a  hackney-coach  without  paying  for  it 
was,  perhaps,  suggested  by  Sheridan's,  but  was  more  laugha- 
ble. Finding  himself  in  the  vehicle,  and  knowing  that  there 
was  nothing  either  in  his  purse  or  at  home  to  pay  the  fare,  he 
cast  about  for  expedients,  and  at  last  remembered  the  address 
of  an  eminent  surgeon  in  the  neighborhood.  He  ordered  the 
coachman  to  drive  to  his  house  and  knock  violently  at  the 
door,  which  was  no  sooner  opened  than  Hook  rushed  in,  terri- 
bly agitated,  demanded  to  see  the  doctor,  to  whom,  in  a  few 
incoherent  and  agitated  sentences,  he  gave  to  understand  that 
his  wife  needed  his  services  immediately,  being  on  the  point 
of  becoming  a  mother. 

"  I  will  start  directly,"  replied  the  surgeon ;  "  I  will  order 
my  carriage  at  once." 

"  But,  my  dear  sir,  there  is  not  a  moment  to  spare.  I  have 
a  coach  at  the  door,  jump  into  that." 

The  surgeon  obeyed.  The  name  and  address  given  were 
those  of  a  middle-aged  spinster  of  the  most  rigid  virtue.  We 
can  imagine  her  indignation,  and  how  sharply  she  rung  the 
bell,  when  the  surgeon  had  delicately  explained  the  object  of 
his  visit,  and  how  eagerly  he  took  refuge  in  the  coach.  Hook 
had,  of  course,  walked  quietly  away  in  the  mean  time,  and  the 
Galenite  had  to  pay  the  demand  of  Jehu. 


416  HOOK'S   TALENTS   AS   AN   IMPKOVISATOEE. 

The  hoaxing  stories  of  Theodore  Hook  are  numberless. 
Hoaxing  was  the  fashion  of  the  day,  and  a  childish  fashion 
too.  Charles  Mathews,  whose  face  possessed  the  flexibility 
of  an  acrobat's  body,  and  who  could  assume  any  character  or 
disguise  on  the  shortest  notice,  was  his  great  confederate  in 
these  plots.  The  banks  of  the  Thames  were  their  great  resort. 
At  one  point  there  was  Mathews  talking  gibberish  in  a  dis- 
guise intended  to  represent  the  Spanish  embassador,  and  act- 
ually deceiving  the  Woolwich  authorities  by  his  clever  imper- 
sonation. At  another,  there  was  Hook  landing  uninvited  with 
his  friends  upon  the  well-known,  sleek-looking  lawn  of  a  testy 
little  gentleman,  drawing  out  a  note-book  and  talking  so  au- 
thoritatively about  the  survey  for  a  canal,  to  be  undertaken  by 
government,  that  the  owner  of  the  lawn  becomes  frightened, 
and  in  his  anxiety  attempts  to  conciliate  the  mighty  self-made 
official  by  the  offer  of  dinner — of  course  accepted. 

Then  the  Arcades  ambo  show  off  their  jesting  tricks  at 
Croydon  fair,  a  most  suitable  place  for  them.  On  one  occasion 
Hook  personates  a  madman,  accusing  Mathews,  "  his  brother," 
of  keeping  him  out  of  his  rights  and  in  his  custody.  The 
whole  fair  collects  around  them,  and  begins  to  sympathize  with 
Hook,  who  begs  them  to  aid  in  his  escape  from  his  "  brother." 
A  sham  escape  and  sham  capture  take  place,  and  the  party  ad- 
journ to  the  inn,  where  Mathews,  who  had  been  taken  by  sur- 
prise by  the  new  part  suddenly  played  by  his  confederate, 
seized  upon  a  hearse,  which  drew  up  before  the  inn,  on  its  re- 
turn from  a  funeral,  persuaded  the  company  to  bind  the  "  mad- 
man," who  was  now  becoming  furious,  and  would  have  deposit- 
ed him  in  the  gloomy  vehicle  if  he  had  not  succeeded  in  snap- 
ping his  fetters,  and  so  escaped.  In  short,  they  were  two  boys, 
with  the  sole  difference  that  they  had  sufficient  talent  and  ex- 
perience of  the  world  to  maintain  admirably  the  parts  they 
assumed. 

But  a  far  more  famous  and  more  admirable  talent  in  Theo- 
dore than  that  of  deception  was  that  of  improvising.  The  art 
of  improvising  belongs  to  Italy  and  the  Tyrol.  The  wonder- 
ful gift  of  ready  verse  to  express  satire  and  ridicule,  seems, 
as  a  rule,  to  be  confined  to  the  inhabitants  of  these  two  lands. 
Others  are,  indeed,  scattered  over  the  world,  who  possess  this 
gift,  but  very  sparsely.  Theodore  Hook  stands  almost  alone 
in  this  country  as  an  improviser.  Yet,  to  judge  of  such  of  his 
verses  as  have  been  preserved,  taken  down  from  memory  or 
what  not,  the  grand  effect  of  them — and  no  doubt  it  was  grand 
— must  have  been  owing  more  to  his  manner  and  his  acting 
than  to  any  intrinsic  value  in  the  verses  themselves,  which 
are,  for  the  most  part,  slight,  and  devoid  of  actual  wit,  though 


TIlEOUOIiE  IIOOK'8   ENGINEERING   FBOLIC. 


THE   GIFT  BECOMES   HIS   BANE.  419 

abounding  in  puns.  Sheridan's  testimony  to  the  wonderful 
powers  of  the  man  is,  perhaps,  more  valuable  than  that  of  any 
one  else,  for  Sherry  was  a  good  judge  both  of  verse  and  of  wit. 
One  of  Hook's  earliest  displays  of  his  talent  was  at  a  dinner 
given  by  the  Drury  Lane  actors  to  Sheridan  at  the  Piazza  Cof- 
fee House  in  1808.  Here,  as  usual,  Hook  sat  down  to  the  pi- 
ano, and,  touching  off  a  few  chords,  gave  verse  after  verse  on 
all  the  events  of  the  entertainment,  on  each  person  present, 
though  he  now  saw  many  of  them  for  the  first  time,  and  on 
any  thing  connected  with  the  matters  of  interest  before  them. 
Sheridan  was  delighted,  and  declared  that  he  could  not  have 
believed  such  a  faculty  possible  if  he  had  not  witnessed  its  ef- 
fects ;  that  no  description  "  could  have  convinced  him  of  so 
peculiar  an  instance  of  genius,"  and  so  forth. 

One  of  his  most  extraordinary  efforts  in  this  line  is  related 
by  Mr.  Jordan.  A  dinner  was  given  by  Mansell  Reynolds 
to  Lockhart,  Luttrell,  Coleridge,  Hook,  Tom  Hill,  and  others. 
The  grown-up  schoolboys,  pretty  far  gone  in  Falernian,  of  a 
home-made  and  very  homely  vintage,  amused  themselves  by 
breaking  the  wine-glasses,  till  Coleridge  was  set  to  demolish 
the  last  of  them  with  a  fork  thrown  at  it  from  the  side  of  the 
table.  Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  any  teetotal  spirit  sug- 
gested this  iconoclasm,  far  from  it — the  glasses  were  too  small, 
and  the  poets,  the  wits,  the  punsters,  the  jesters,  preferred  to 
drink  their  port  out  of  tumblers.  After  dinner  Hook  gave 
one  of  his  songs,  which  satirized  successively,  and  successfully, 
each  person  present.  He  was  then  challenged  to  improvise 
on  any  given  subject,  and  by  way  of  one  as  far  distant  from 
poetry  as  could  be,  cocoanut  oil  was  fixed  upon.  Theodore 
accepted  the  challenge;  and  after  a  moment's  consideration 
began  his  lay  with  a  description  of  the  Mauritius,  which  he 
knew  so  well,  the  negroes  dancing  round  the  cocoanut-tree, 
the  process  of  extracting  the  oil,  and  so  forth,  all  in  excellent 
rhyme  and  rhythm,  if  not  actual  poetry.  Then  came  the  voy- 
age to  England,  hits  at  the  Italian  warehousemen,  and  so  on, 
till  the  oil  is  brought  into  the  very  lamp  before  them  in  that 
very  room,  to  show  them  with  the  light  it  feeds,  and  make  them 
able  to  break  wine-glasses  and  get  drunk  from  tumblers.  This 
we  may  be  sure  Hook  himself  did,  for  one,  and  the  rest  were 
probably  not  much  behind  him. 

In  late  life  this  gift  of  Hook's — improvising  I  mean,  not  get- 
ting intoxicated — was  his  highest  recommendation  in  society, 
and  at  the  same  time  his  bane.  Like  Sheridan,  he  was  ruined 
by  his  wonderful  natural  powers.  It  can  well  be  imagined  that 
to  improvise  in  the  manner  in  which  Hook  did  it,  and  at  a  mo- 
ment's notice,  required  some  effort  of  the  intellect.  This  effort 


420  HOOK'S  NOVELS. 

became  greater  as  circumstances  depressed  his  spirits  more  and 
more,  and  yet,  with  every  care  upon  his  mind,  he  was  expected, 
wherever  he  went,  to  amuse  the  guests  with  a  display  of  his  tal- 
ent. He  could  not  do  so  without  stimulants,  and,  rather  than 
give  up  society,  fell  into  habits  of  drinking,  which  hastened  his 
death. 

We  have  thrown  together  the  foregoing  anecdotes  of  Hook, 
irrespective  of  time,  in  order  to  show  what  the  man's  gifts 
were,  and  what  his  title  to  be  considered  a  wit.  We  must 
proceed  more  steadily  to  a  review  of  his  life.  Successful  as 
Hook  had  proved  as  a  writer  for  the  stage,  he  suddenly  and 
without  any  sufficient  cause  rushed  off  into  another  branch  of 
literature,  that  of  novel -writing.  His  first  attempt  in  this 
kind  of  fiction  was  "  The  Man  of  Sorrow,"  published  under  the 
nom  deplume  of  Alfred  Allendale.  This  was  not,  as  its  name 
would  seem  to  imply,  a  novel  of  pathetic  cast,  but  the  history 
of  a  gentleman  whose  life  from  beginning  to  end  is  rendered 
wretched  by  a  succession  of  mishaps  of  the  most  ludicrous  but 
improbable  kind.  Indeed,  Theodore's  novels,  like  his  stage- 
pieces,  are  gone  out  of  date  in  an  age  so  practical  that  even 
in  romance  it  will  not  allow  of  the  slightest  departure  from 
reality.  Their  very  style  was  ephemeral,  and  their  interest 
could  not  outlast  the  generation  to  amuse  which  they  were 
penned.  This  first  novel  was  written  when  Hook  was  one- 
and-twenty.  Soon  after  he  was  sent  to  Oxford,  where  he  had 
been  entered  at  St.  Mary's  Hall,  more  affectionately  known 
by  the  nickname  of  "Skimmery."  No  selection  could  have 
been  worse.  Skimmery  was,  at  that  day,  and  until  quite  re- 
cently, a  den  of  thieves,  where  young  men  of  fortune  and  folly 
submitted  to  be  pillaged  in  return  for  being  allowed  perfect 
license,  as  much  to  eat  as  they  could  possibly  swallow,  and 
far  more  to  drink  than  was  at  all  good  for  them.  It  has  re- 
quired all  the  enterprise  of  the  present  excellent  Principal  to 
convert  it  into  a  place  of  sober  study.  It  was  then  the  most 
"  gentlemanly"  residence  in  Oxford ;  for  a  gentleman  in  those 
days  meant  a  man  who  did  nothing,  spent  his  own  or  his  fa- 
ther's guineas  with  a  brilliant  indifference  to  consequences, 
and  who  applied  his  mind  solely  to  the  art  of  frolic.  It  was 
the  very  place  where  Hook  would  be  encouraged  instead  of 
restrained  in  his  natural  propensities,  and  had  he  remained 
there,  he  would  probably  have  ruined  himself  and  his  father 
long  before  he  had  put  on  the  sleeves. 

At  the  matriculation  itself  he  gave  a  specimen  of  his  "  fun." 
When  asked,  according  to  the  usual  form,  "  if  he  was  willing 
to  sign  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,"  he  replied,  "  Certainly,  sir ; 
forty  if  you  please."  The  gravity  of  the  stern  Vice-Chancel- 


COLLEGE  FUN.  421 

lor  was  upset,  but  as  no  Oxford  Don  can  ever  pardon  a  joke, 
however  good,  Master  Theodore  was  very  nearly  being  dis- 
missed, had  not  his  brother,  by  this  time  a  Prebendary  of 
Winchester,  and  "an  honor  to  his  college,  sir,"  interceded  in 
his  favor. 

The  night  before,  he  had  given  a  still  better  specimen  of  his 
impudence.  He  had  picked  up  a  number  of  old  Harrowvians, 
with  whom  he  had  repaired  to  a  tavern  for  song,  supper,  and 
sociability,  and  as  usual  in  such  cases,  in  the  lap  of  Alma  Ma- 
ter, the  babes  became  sufficiently  intoxicated,  and  not  a  little 
uproarious.  Drinking  in  a  tavern  is  forbidden  by  Oxonian 
statutes,  and  one  of  the  proctors  happening  to  pass  in  the 
street  outside,  was  attracted  into  the  house  by  the  sound  of 
somewhat  unscholastic  merriment.  The  effect  can  be  imag- 
ined. All  the  youths  were  in  absolute  terror,  except  Theo- 
dore, and  looked  in  vain  for  some  way  to  escape.  The  wary 
and  faithful  "bull-dogs"  guarded  the  doorway;  the  marshal, 
predecessor  of  the  modern  omniscient  Brown,  advanced  re- 
spectfully behind  the  proctor  into  the  room,  and  passing  a 
penetrating  glance  from  one  youth  to  the  other,  all  of  whom 
— except  Theodore  again — he  knew  by  sight — for  that  is  the 
pride  and  pleasure  of  a  marshal— mentally  registered  their 
names  in  secret  hopes  of  getting  half  a  crown  apiece  to  forget 
them  again. 

No  mortal  is  more  respectful  in  his  manner  of  accosting  you 
than  an  Oxford  proctor,  for  he  may  make  a  mistake,  and  a 
mistake  may  make  him  very  miserable.  When,  for  instance, 
a  highly  respectable  lady  was  the  other  day  lodged,  in  spite  of 
protestations,  in  the  "  Procuratorial  Rooms,"  and  there  locked 
up  on  suspicion  of  being  somebody  very  different,  the  over- 
zealous  proctor  who  had  ordered  her  incarceration  was  sued 
for  damages  for  £300,  and  had  to  pay  them  too !  Therefore 
the  gentleman  in  question  most  graciously  and  suavely  in- 
quired of  Mr.  Theodore  Hook — 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,  but  are  you  a  member  of  this  uni- 
versity ?" — the  usual  form. 

"  No,  sir,  I  am  not.     Are  you  ?" 

The  suavity  at  once  changed  to  grave  dignity.  The  proc- 
tor lifted  up  the  hem  of  his  garment,  which  being  of  broad 
velvet,  with  the  selvage  on  it,  was  one  of  the  insignia  of  his 
office,  and  sternly  said,  "  You  see  this,  sir." 

"  Ah  !"  said  Hook,  cool  as  ever,  and  quietly  feeling  the  ma- 
terial, which  he  examined  with  apparent  interest,  "  I  see ;  Man- 
chester velvet :  and  may  I  take  the  liberty,  sir,  of  inquiring  how 
much  you  have  paid  per  yard  for  the  article  ?" 

A  roar  of  laughter  from  all  present  burst  out  with  such  ve- 


422  THE 

hemence  that  it  shot  the  poor  official,  red  with  suppressed  an- 

fer,  into  the  street  again,  and  the  merrymakers  continued  their 
out  till  the  approach  of  midnight,  when  they  were  obliged  to 
return  to  their  respective  colleges. 

Had  Theodore  proceeded  in  this  way  for  several  terms,  no 
doubt  the  outraged  authorities  would  have  added  his  name  to 
the  list  of  the  great  men  whom  they  have  expelled  from  time 
to  time  most  unprophetically.  As  it  was,  he  soon  left  the 
groves  of  Academus,  and  sought  those  of  Fashion  in  town. 
His  matriculation  into  this  new  university  was  much  more  au- 
spicious ;  he  was  hailed  in  society  as  already  fit  to  take  a  degree 
of  bachelor  of  his  particular  arts,  and  ere  long  his  improvising, 
his  fun,  his  mirth — as  yet  natural  and  overboiling — his  wicked 
punning,  and  his  tender  wickedness,  induced  the  same  institu- 
tion to  offer  him.  the  grade  of"  Master"  of  those  arts.  In  after 
years  he  rose  to  be  even  "Doctor,"  and  many,  perhaps,  were 
the  minds  diseased  to  which  his  well-known  mirth  ministered. 
It  was  during  this  period  that  some  of  his  talents  were 
displayed  in  the  manner  we  have  described,  though  his  great 
fame  as  an  improvisatore  was  established  more  completely  in 
later  days.  Yet  he  had  already  made  himself  a  name  in  that 
species  of  wit — not  a  very  high  one — which  found  favor  with 
the  society  of  that  period.  We  allude  to  imitation,  "  taking 
off,"  and  punning.  The  last  contemptible  branch  of  wit-mak- 
ing, now  happily  confined  to  "  Punch,"  is  as  old  as  variety  of 
language.  It  is  not  possible  with  simple  vocabularies,  and 
accordingly  is  seldom  met  with  in  purely-derived  languages. 
Yet  we  have  Roman  and  Greek  puns ;  and  English  is  peculiar- 
ly adapted  to  this  childish  exercise,  because,  being  made  up  of 
several  languages,  it  necessarily  contains  many  words  which 
are  like  in  sound  and  unlike  in  meaning.  Punning  is,  in  fact, 
the  vice  of  English  wit,  the  temptation  of  English  mirth-mak- 
ers, and,  at  last,  we  trust,  the  scorn  of  English  good  sense. 
But  in  Theodore's  day  it  held  a  high  place,  and  men  who  had 
no  real  wit  about  them  could  twist  and  turn  words  and  com- 
binations of  words  with  great  ingenuity  and  much  readiness, 
to  the  delight  of  their  listeners.  Pun-making  was  a  fashion 
among  the  conversationists  of  that  day,  and  took  the  place  of 
better  wit.  Hook  was  a  disgraceful  punster,  and  a  successful 
one.  He  strung  puns  together  by  the  score — nothing  more 
easy — in  his  improvised  songs  and  conversation.  Take  an  in- 
stance from  his  quiz  on  the  march  of  intellect : 

"Hackney-coachmen  from  Swift  shall  reply,  if  you  feel 

Annoyed  at  being  needlessly  shaken ; 
And  butchers,  of  course,  be  flippant  from  Steele, 
And  pig-drivers  well  versed  in  Bacon. 


OFFICIAL   LIFE    OPENS.  423 

From  Locke,  shall  the  blacksmiths  authority  brave, 

And  gas-men  cite  Coke  at  discretion ; 
Undertakers  talk  Gay  as  they  go  to  the  grave, 

And  watermen  Howe  by  profession."  ' 

I  have  known  a  party  of  naturally  stupid  people  produce  a 
whole  century  of  puns  one  after  another,  on  any  subject  that 
presented  itself,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  nothing  can, 
at  the  same  time,  be  more  nauseous,  or  more  destructive  to 
real  wit.  Yet  Theodore's  strength  lay  in  puns,  and  when 
shorn  of  them,  the  Philistines  might  well  laugh  at  his  want 
of  strength.  Surely  his  title  to  wit  does  not  lie  in  that  di- 
rection. 

However,  he  amused,  and  that  gratis ;  and  an  amusing  man 
makes  his  way  any  where  if  he  have  only  sufficient  tact  not  to 
abuse  his  privileges.  Hook  grew  great  in  London  society  for 
a  time,  and  might  have  grown  greater  if  a  change  had  not  come. 

He  had  supported  himself,  up  to  1812,  almost  entirely  by 
his  pen ;  and  the  goose-quill  is  rarely  a  staff,  though  it  may 
sometimes  be  a  walking-stick.  It  was  clear  that  he  needed — 
what  so  many  of  us  need  and  can  not  get — a  certainty.  Happy 
fellow ;  he  might  have  begged  for  an  appointment  for  years  in 
vain,  as  many  another  does,  but  it  fell  into  his  lap,  no  one 
knows  how,  and  at  four-and-twenty  Mr.  Theodore  Edward 
Hook  was  made  treasurer  to  the  Island  of  Mauritius,  with  a 
salary  of  £2000  per  annum.  This  was  not  to  be,  and  was  not, 
sneezed  at.  In  spite  of  climate,  musquitoes,  and  so  forth,  Hook 
took  the  money  and  sailed. 

We  have  no  intention  of  entering  minutely  upon  his  conduct 
in  this  office,  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  his  character  as  a 
wit.  There  are  a  thousand  and  one  reasons  for  believing  him 
guilty  of  the  charges  brought  against  him,  and  a  thousand  and 
one  for  supposing  him  guiltless.  Here  was  a  young  man,  gay, 
jovial,  given  to  society  entirely,  and  not  at  all  to  arithmetic, 
put  into  a  very  trying  and  awkward  position — native  clerks 
who  would  cheat  if  they  could,  English  governors  who  would 
find  fault  if  they  could,  a  disturbed  treasury,  an  awkward  cur- 
rency, liars  for  witnesses,  and  undeniable  evidence  of  defalca- 
tion. In  a  word,  an  examination  was  made  into  the  state  of 
the  treasury  of  the  island,  and  a  large  deficit  found.  It  re- 
mained to  trace  it  home  to  its  original  author. 

Hook  had  not  acquired  the  best  character  in  the  island. 
Those  who  know  the  official  dignity  of  a  small  British  colony 
can  well  understand  how  his  pleasantries  must  have  shocked 
those  worthy  big-wigs  who,  exalted  from  Pump  Court,  Tem- 
ple, or  Paradise  Row,  Old  Brompton,  to  places  of  honor  and 
high  salaries,  rode  their  high  horses  with  twice  the  exclusive- 


424  CHARGE   OF   EMBEZZLEMENT. 

ness  of  those  "to  the  manor  born."  For  instance,  Hook  was 
once,  by  a  mere  chance,  obliged  to  take  the  chair  at  an  official 
dinner,  on  which  occasion  the  toasts  proposed  by  the  chairman 
were  to  be  accompanied  by  a  salute  from  guns  without.  Hook 
went  through  the  list,  and  seemed  to  enjoy  toast-drinking  so 
much  that  he  was  quite  sorry  to  have  come  to  the  end  of  it, 
and  continued,  as  if  still  from  the  list,  to  propose  successively 
the  health  of  each  officer  present.  The  gunners  were  growing 
quite  weary,  but,  having  their  orders,  dared  not  complain. 
Hook  was  delighted,  and  went  on  to  the  amazement  and 
amusement  of  all  who  were  not  tired  of  the  noise,  each  youth- 
ful sub,  taken  by  surprise,  being  quite  gratified  at  the  honor 
done  him.  At  last  there  was  no  one  left  to  toast;  but  the 
wine  had  taken  effect,  and  Hook,  amid  roars  of  laughter  in- 
side, and  roars  of  savage  artillery  without,  proposed  the  health 
of  the  waiter  who  had  so  ably  officiated.  This  done,  he  be- 
thought him  of  the  cook,  who  was  sent  for  to  return  thanks ; 
but  the  artillery  officer  had  by  this  time  got  wind  of  the  affair, 
and  feeling  that  more  than  enough  powder  had  been  wasted 
on  the  health  of  gentlemen  who  were  determined  to  destroy  it 
by  the  number  of  their  potations,  took  on  himself  the  respons- 
ibility of  ordering  the  gunners  to  stop. 

On  another  occasion  he  incurred  the  displeasure  of  the  gov- 
ernor, General  Hall,  by  fighting  a  duel — fortunately  as  harm- 
less as  that  of  Moore  and  Jeffrey — 

"  When  Little's  leadless  pistol  met  his  eye, 

And  Bow-street  myrmidons  stood  laughing  by," 

as  Byron  says.  The  governor  was  sensible  enough  to  wish  to 
put  down  the  "  Gothic  appeal  to  arms,"  and  was  therefore  the 
more  irate. 

These  circumstances  must  be  taken  into  consideration  in 
Hook's  favor  in  examining  the  charge  of  embezzlement.  It 
must  also  be  stated  that  the  information  of  the  deficit  was 
sent  in  a  letter  to  the  governor  by  a  man  named  Allan,  chief 
clerk  in  the  Treasury,  who  had,  for  irregular  conduct,  been 
already  threatened  with  dismissal.  Allan  had  admitted  that 
he  had  known  of  the  deficit  for  fifteen  months,  and  yet  he  had 
not,  till  he  was  himself  in  trouble,  thought  of  making  it  known 
to  the  proper  authorities.  Before  his  examination,  which  of 
course  followed,  could  be  concluded,  Allan  committed  suicide. 
Now,  does  it  not,  on  the  face  of  it,  seem  of  the  highest  proba- 
bility that  this  man  was  the  real  delinquent,  and  that,  know- 
ing that  Hook  had  all  the  responsibility,  and  having  taken  fair 
precautions  against  his  own  detection,  he  had  anticipated  a 
discovery  of  the  affair  by  a  revelation,  incriminating  the  treas- 
urer? Quien  sabe; — dead  men  tell  no  tales. 


MISFORTUNE.  425 

The  chest,  however,  was  examined,  and  the  deficit  found 
far  greater  yet  than  had  been  reported.  Hook  could  not  ex- 
plain, could  not  understand  it  at  all ;  but  if  not  criminal,  he 
had  necessarily  been  careless.  He  was  arrested,  thrown  into 
prison,  and  by  the  first  vessel  dispatched  to  England  to  take 
his  trial,  his  property  of  every  kind  having  been  sold  for  the 
Government.  Hook,  in  utter  destitution,  might  be  supposed 
to  have  lost  his  usual  spirits,  but  he  could  not  resist  a  joke. 
At  St.  Helena  he  met  an  old  friend  going  out  to  the  Cape, 
who,  surprised  at  seeing  him  on  his  return  voyage  after  a  res- 
idence of  only  five  years,  said,  "I  hope  you  are  not  going 
home  for  your  health."  "  Why,"  said  Theodore,  "  I  am  sor- 
ry to  say  they  think  there  is  something  wrong  in  the  chest" 
"  Something  wrong  in  the  chest"  became  henceforward  the  or- 
dinary phrase  in  London  society  in  referring  to  Hook's  scrape. 

Arrived  in  England,  he  was  set  free,  the  Government  here 
having  decided  that  he  could  not  be  criminally  tried  ;  and  thus 
Hook,  guilty  or  not,  had  been  ruined  and  disgraced  for  life  for 
simple  carelessness.  True,  the  custody  of  a  nation's  property 
makes  negligence  almost  criminal;  but  that  does  not  excuse 
the  punishment  of  a  man  before  he  is  tried. 

He  was  summoned,  however,  to  the  Colonial  Audit  Board, 
where  he  underwent  a  trying  examination ;  after  which  he  was 
declared  to  be  in  the  debt  of  Government :  a  writ  of  extent 
was  issued  against  him ;  nine  months  were  passed  in  that  de- 
lightful place  of  residence — a  sponging-house,  which  he  then 
exchanged  for  the  "  Rules  of  the  Bench" — the  only  rules  which 
have  no  exception.  From  these  he  was  at  last  liberated,  in 
1825,  on  the  understanding  that  he  was  to  repay  the  money 
to  Government  if  at  any  time  he  should  be  in  a  position  to 
do  so. 

His  liberation  was  a  tacit  acknowledgment  of  his  innocence 
of  the  charge  of  robbery;  his  encumberment  with  a  debt 
caused  by  another's  delinquencies  was,  we  presume,  a  signifi- 
cation of  his  responsibility  and  some  kind  of  punishment  for 
his  carelessness.  Certainly  it  was  hard  upon  Hook,  that,  if 
innocent,  he  should  not  have  gone  forth  without  a  stain  on 
his  character  for  honesty;  and  it  was  unjust  that,  if  guilty,  he 
should  not  have  been  punished.  The  judgment  was  one  of 
those  compromises  with  stern  justice  which  are  seldom  satis- 
factory to  either  party. 

The  fact  was  that,  guilty  or  not  guilty,  Hook  had  been  both 
incompetent  and  inconsiderate.  Doubtless  he  congratulated 
himself  highly  on  receiving,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  an  ap- 
pointment worth  £2000  a  year  in  the  paradise  of  the  world ; 
but  how  short-sighted  his  satisfaction,  since  this  very  appoint- 


426  DOUBLY   DISGRACED. 

ment  left  him  some  ten  years  later  a  pauper  to  begin  life  anew 
with  an  indelible  stain  on  his  character.  It  was  absurd  to  give 
so  young  a  man  such  a  post ;  but  it  was  absolutely  wrong  in 
Hook  not  to  do  his  utmost  to  carry  out  his  duties  properly. 
Nay,  he  had  trifled  with  the  public  money  in  the  same  liberal 
— perhaps  a  more  liberal — spirit  as  if  it  had  been  his  own — 
made  advances  and  loans  here  and  there  injudiciously,  and 
taken  little  heed  of  the  consequences.  Probably,  at  this  day, 
the  common  opinion  acquits  Hook  of  a  designed  and  compli- 
cated fraud ;  but  common  opinion  never  did  acquit  him  of  mis- 
conduct, and  even  by  his  friends  this  affair  was  looked  upon 
with  a  suspicion  that  preferred  silence  to  examination. 

But  why  take  such  pains  to  exonerate  Hook  from  a  charge 
of  robbery,  when  he  was  avowedly  guilty  of  as  bad  a  sin,  of 
which  the  law  took  no  cognizance,  and  which  society  forgave 
far  more  easily  than  it  could  have  done  for  robbing  the  state  ? 
Soon  after  his  return  from  the  Mauritius,  he  took  lodgings  in 
the  cheap  but  unfashionable  neighborhood  of  Somers  Town. 
Here,  in  the  moment  of  his  misfortune,  when  doubting  wheth- 
er disgrace,  imprisonment,  or  what  not  awaited  him,  he  sought 
solace  in  the  affection  of  a  young  woman,  of  a  class  certainly 
much  beneath  his,  and  of  a  character  unfit  to  make  her  a  valu- 
able companion  to  him.  Hook  had  received  little  moral  train- 
ing, and  had  he  done  so,  his  impulses  were  sufficiently  strong 
to  overcome  any  amount  of  principle.  With  this  person — to 
use  the  modern  slang  which  seems  to  convert  a  glaring  sin 
into  a  social  misdemeanor — "  he  formed  a  connection."  In 
other  words,  he  destroyed  her  virtue.  Hateful  as  such  an  act 
is,  we  must,  before  we  can  condemn  a  man  for  it  without  any 
recommendation  to  mercy,  consider  a  score  of  circumstances 
which  have  rendered  the  temptation  stronger  and  the  result 
almost  involuntary.  Hook  was  not  a  man  of  high  moral  char- 
acter— very  far  from  it — but  we  need  not  therefore  suppose 
that  he  sat  down  coolly  and  deliberately,  like  a  villain  in  a 
novel,  to  effect  the  girl's  ruin.  But  the  Rubicon  once  passed, 
how  difficult  is  the  retreat !  There  are  but  two  paths  open  to 
a  man  who  would  avoid  living  a  life  of  sin :  the  one,  to  marry 
his  victim ;  the  other,  to  break  off  the  connection  before  it  is 
too  late.  The  first  is,  of  course,  the  more  proper  course ;  but 
there  are  cases  where  marriage  is  impossible.  From  the  lat- 
ter a  man  of  any  heart  must  shrink  with  horror.  Yet  there 
are  cases,  even,  where  the  one  sin  will  prove  the  least — where 
she  who  has  loved  too  well  may  grieve  bitterly  at  parting,  yet 
will  be  no  more  open  to  temptation  than  if  she  had  never  fall- 
en. Such  cases  are  rare,  and  it  is  not  probable  that  the  young 
person  with  whom  Hook  had  become  connected  would  have 


ATTACKS  ON  THE  QUEEN.  427 

retrieved  the  fatal  error.  She  became  a  mother,  and  there 
was  no  retreat.  It  is  clear  that  Hook  ought  to  have  married 
her.  It  is  evident  that  he  was  selfish  and  wrong  not  to  do  so ; 
yet  he  shrank  from  it  weakly,  wickedly,  and  he  was  punished 
for  his  shrinking.  He  had  sufficient  feeling  not  to  throw  his 
victim  over,  yet  he  was  content  to  live  a  life  of  sin  and  to 
keep  her  in  such  a  life.  This  is,  perhaps,  the  blackest  stain 
on  Hook's  character.  When  Fox  married,  in  consequence  of 
a  similar  connection,  he  "  settled  down,"  retrieved  his  early 
errors,  and  became  a  better  man,  morally,  than  he  had  ever 
been.  Hook  ought  to  have  married.  It  was  the  cowardly 
dread  of  public  opinion  that  deterred  him  from  doing  so,  and, 
in  consequence,  he  was  never  happy,  and  felt  that  this  connec- 
tion was  a  perpetual  burden  to  him. 

Wrecked  and  ruined,  Hook  had  no  resource  but  his  literary 
talents,  and  it  is  to  be  deplored  that  he  should  have  prostitu- 
ted these  to  serve  an  ungentlemanly  and  dishonorable  party  in 
their  onslaught  upon  an  unfortunate  woman.  Whatever  may 
be  now  thought  of  the  queen  of  "the  greatest  gentleman" — or 
roue — of  Europe,  those  who  hunted  her  down  will  never  be 
pardoned,  and  Hook  was  one  of  those.  We  have  cried  out 
against  an  Austrian  general  for  condemning  a  Hungarian  lady 
to  the  lash,  and  we  have  seen,  with  delight,  a  mob  chase  him 
through  the  streets  of  London  and  threaten  his  very  life.  But 
we  have  not  only  pardoned,  but  even  praised,  our  favorite  wit 
for  far  worse  conduct  than  this.  Even  if  we  allow,  which  we 
do  not,  that  the  queen  was  one  half  as  bad  as  her  enemies,  or 
rather  her  husband's  toadies,  would  make  her  out,  we  can  not 
forgive  the  men  who,  shielded  by  their  incognito,  and  perfect- 
ly free  from  danger  of  any  kind,  set  upon  a  woman  with  libels, 
invectives,  ballads,  epigrams,  and  lampoons,  which  a  lady  could 
scarcely  read,  and  of  which  a  royal  lady,  and  many  an  English 
gentlewoman,  too,  were  the  butts. 

The  vilest  of  all  the  vile  papers  of  that  day  was  the  "  John 
Bull,"  now  settled  down  to  a  quiet  periodical.  Perhaps  the 
real  John  Bull,  heavy,  good-natured  lumberer  as  he  is,  was 
never  worse  represented  than  in  this  journal  which  bore  his 
name,  but  had  little  of  his  kindly  spirit.  Hook  was  its  origin- 
ator, and  for  a  long  time  its  main  supporter.  Scurrility,  scan- 
dal, libel, "baseness  of  all  kinds  formed  the  fuel  with  which  it 
blazed,  and  the  wit,  bitter,  unflinching,  unsparing,  which  puff- 
ed the  flame  up,  was  its  chief  recommendation. 

No  more  disgraceful  climax  was  ever  reached  by  a  disgrace- 
ful dynasty  of  profligates  than  that  which  found  a  King  of 
England — long,  as  Regent,  the  leader  of  the  profligate  and  de- 
graded— at  war  with  his  injured  queen.  None  have  deserved 


428  AN  INCONGRUOUS  MIXTURE. 

better  the  honest  gratitude  of  their  country  than  those  who, 
like  Henry  Brougham,  defended  the  oppressed  woman  in  spite 
of  opposition,  obloquy,  and  ridicule. 

But  we  need  not  go  deeply  into  a  history  so  fresh  in  the 
minds  of  all,  as  that  blot  which  shows  John  Bull  himself  up- 
holding a  wretched  dissipated  monarch  against  a  wife,  who, 
whatever  her  faults,  was  still  a  woman,  and  whatever  her 
spirit — for  she  had  much  of  it,  and  showed  it  grandly  at  need 
— was  still  a  lady.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  "John  Bull"  was 
the  most  violent  of  the  periodicals  that  attacked  her,  and  that 
Theodore  Hook,  no  Puritan  himself,  was  the  principal  writer 
in  that  paper. 

If  you  can  imagine  "Punch"  turned  Conservative,  incorpo- 
rated in  one  paper  with  the  "  Morning  Herald,"  so  that  a  col- 
umn of  news  was  printed  side  by  side  with  one  of  a  jocular 
character,  and  these  two  together  devoted  without  principle 
to  the  support  of  a  party,  the  attack  of  Whiggism,  and  an  un- 
blushing detractation  of  the  character  of  one  of  our  princess- 
es, you  can  form  some  idea  of  what  "  John  Bull"  was  in  those 
days.  There  is,  however,  a  difference  :  "  Punch"  attacks  pub- 
lic characters,  and  ridicules  public  events ;  "  John  Bull"  drag- 
ged out  the  most  retired  from  their  privacy,  and  attacked 
them  with  calumnies,  for  which,  often,  there  was  no  founda- 
tion. Then,  again,  "Punch"  is  not  nearly  so  bitter  as  was 
"  John  Bull :"  there  is  not  in  the  "  London  Charivari"  a  de- 
termination to  say  every  thing  that  spite  can  invent  against 
any  particular  set  or  party ;  there  is  a  good-nature,  still,  in 
Master  "Punch."  It  was  quite  the  reverse  in  "John  Bull," 
established  for  one  purpose,  and  devoted  to  that.  Yet  the 
wit  in  Theodore's  paper  does  not  rise  much  higher  than  that 
of  our  modern  laughing  philosopher. 

Of  Hook's  contributions  the  most  remarkable  was  the  "  Rams- 
bottom  Letters,"  in  which  Mrs.  Lavinia  Dorothea  Ramsbottom 
describes  all  the  memory  billions  of  her  various  tours  at  home 
and  abroad,  always,  of  course,  with  more  or  less  allusion  to 
political  affairs.  The  "  fun"  of  these  letters  is  very  inferior  to 
that  of  "  Jeames"  or  of  the  "  Snob  Papers,"  and  consists  more 
in  Malaprop  absurdities  and  a  wide  range  of  bad  puns,  than  in 
any  real  wit  displayed  in  them.  Of  the  style  of  both,  we  take 
an  extract  any  where : 

"  Oh !  Mr.  Bull,  Room  is  raley  a  beautiful  place.  We  en- 
tered it  by  the  Point  of  Molly,  which  is  just  like  the  Point  and 
Sally  at  Porchmouth,  only  they  call  Sally  there  Port,  which  is 
not  known  in  Room.  The  Tiber  is  a  nice  river ;  it  looks  yel- 
low, but  it  does  the  same  there  as  the  Tames  does  here.  We 
hired  a  carry-lettz  and  a  cocky-oily  to  take  us  to  the  Church 


HOOK'S  SONG  ON  CLUBS.  429 

of  Salt  Peter,  which  is  prodigious  big ;  in  the  centre  of  the  pi- 
zarro  there  is  a  basilisk  very  high,  on  the  right  and  left  two 
handsome  foundlings ;  and  the  farcy,  as  Mr.  Fulmer  called  it, 
is  ornamented  with  collateral  statutes  of  some  of  the  Apos- 
tates." 

We  can  quite  imagine  that  Hook  wrote  many  of  these  let- 
ters in  his  cups.  Some  are  laughable  enough,  but  the  major- 
ity are  so  deplorably  stupid,  reeking  with  puns  and  scurrility, 
that  when  the  temporary  interest  was  gone,  there  was  nothing 
left  to  attract  a  reader.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  laugh  at  the 
Joe-Millerish  mistakes,  the  old-world  puns,  and  the  trite  sto- 
ries of  Hook  "  remains."  Remains !  indeed ;  they  had  better 
have  remained  where  they  were. 

Besides  prose  of  this  kind,  Hook  contributed  various  jin- 
gles— there  is  no  other  name  for  them — arranged  to  popular 
tunes,  and  intended  to  become  favorites  with  the  country  peo- 
ple. These,  like  the  prose  effusions,  served  the  purpose  of  an 
hour,  and  have  no  interest  now.  Whether  they  were  ever 
really  popular  remains  to  be  proved.  Certes,  they  are  forgot- 
ten now,  and  long  since  even  in  the  most  conservative  corners 
of  the  country.  Many  of  these  have  the  appearance  of  having 
been  originally  recitati,  and  their  amusement  must  have  de- 
pended chiefly  on  the  face  and  manner  of  the  singer — Hook 
himself;  but  in  some  he  displayed  that  vice  of  rhyming  which 
has  often  made  nonsense  go  down,  and  which  is  tolerable  only 
when  introduced  in  the  satire  of  a  "  Don  Juan"  or  the  first- 
rate  mimicry  of  "  Rejected  Addresses."  Hook  had  a  most 
wonderful  facility  in  concocting  out-of-the-way  rhymes,  and 
a  few  verses  from  his  song  on  Clubs  will  suffice  for  a  good 
specimen  of  his  talent : 

"If  any  man  loves  comfort,  and  has  little  cash  to  buy  it,  he 
Should  get  into  a  crowded  club — a  most  select  society ; 
While  solitude  and  mutton-cutlets  serve  infelix  uxor,  he 

May  have  his  club  (like  Hercules),  and  revel  there  in  luxury. 

Bow,  wow,  wow,  etc. 

"Yes,  clubs  knock  houses  on  the  head  ;  e'en  Hatchett's  can't  demolish  them  ; 

Joy  grieves  to  see  their  magnitude,  and  Long  longs  to  abolish  them. 
The  inns  are  out ;  hotels  for  single  men  scarce  keep  alive  on  it ; 
While  none  but  houses  that  are  in  the  family  way  thrive  on  it. 

Bow,  wow,  wow,  etc. 

"There's  first  the  Athenaeum  Club,  so  wise,  there's  not  a  man  of  it 

That  has  not  sense  enough  for  six  (in  fact,  that  is  the  plan  of  it) ; 
The  very  waiters  answer  you  with  eloquence  Socratical ; 

And  always  place  the  knives  and  forks  in  order  mathematical. 

Bow,  wow,  wow,  etc. 

***** 
**  E'en  Isis  has  a  house  in  town,  and  Cam  abandons  her  city. 
The  master  now  hangs  out  at  the  Trinity  University. 


430  FOETUNE   AND   POPULAEITY. 

***** 
' '  The  Union  Club  is  quite  superb  ;  its  best  apartment  daily  is 
The  lounge  of  lawyers,  doctors,  merchants,  beaux,  cum  multis  alas. 

*  *  *  *  * 

"The  Travelers  are  in  Pall  Mall,  and  smoke  cigars  so  cosily, 
And  dream  they  climb  the  highest  Alps,  or  rove  the  plains  of  Moselai. 

*  *  *  *  * 

"These  are  the  stages  which  all  men  propose  to  play  their  parts  upon, 
For  clubs  are  what  the  Londoners  have  clearly  set  their  hearts  upon. 
Bow,  wow,  wow,' tiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy,  bow,  wow,  wow,"  etc. 

This  is  one  of  the  harmless  ballads  of  "  Bull."  Some  of  the 
political  ones  are  scarcely  fit  to  print  in  the  present  day.  We 
can  not  wonder  that  ladies  of  a  certain  position  gave  out  that 
they  would  not  receive  any  one  who  took  in  this  paper.  It 
was  scurrilous  to  the  last  degree,  and  Theodore  Hook  was  the 
soul  of  it.  He  preserved  his  incognito  so  well  that,  in  spite 
of  all  attempts  to  unearth  him,  it  was  many  years  before  he 
could  be  certainly  fixed  upon  as  a  writer  in  its  columns.  He 
even  went  to  the  length  of  writing  letters  and  articles  against 
himself,  in  order  to  disarm  suspicion. 

Hook  now  lived  and  thrived  purely  on  literature.  He  pub- 
lished many  novels — gone  where  the  bad  novels  go,  and  un- 
read in  the  present  day,  unless  in  some  remote  country  town, 
which  boasts  only  a  very  meagre  circulating  library.  Improb- 
ability took  the  place  of  natural  painting  in  them ;  punning 
supplied  that  of  better  wit ;  and  personal  portraiture  was  so 
freely  used,  that  his  most  intimate  friends — old  Mathews,  for 
instance — did  not  escape. 

Meanwhile  Hook,  now  making  a  good  fortune,  returned  to 
his  convivial  life,  and  the  enjoyment — if  enjoyment  it  be — of 
general  society.  He  "  threw  out  his  bow-window"  on  the 
strength  of  his  success  with  "  John  Bull,"  and  spent  much 
more  than  he  had.  He  mingled  freely  in  all  the  London  cir- 
cles of  thirty  years  ago,  whose  glory  is  still  fresh  in  the  minds 
of  most  of  us,  and  every  where  his  talent  as  an  improvisatore, 
and  his  conversational  powers,  made  him  a  general  favorite. 

Unhappy  popularity  for  Hook !  He,  who  was  yet  deeply  in 
debt  to  the  nation — who  had  an  illegitimate  family  to  maintain, 
who  owed  in  many  quarters  more  than  he  could  ever  hope  to 
pay — was  still  fool  enough  to  entertain  largely,  and  receive 
both  nobles  and  wits  in  the  handsomest  manner.  Why  did  he 
not  live  quietly  ?  why  not,  like  Fox,  marry  the  unhappy  wom- 
an whom  he  had  made  the  mother  of  his  children,  and  content 
himself  with  trimming  vines  and  rearing  tulips  ?  Why,  for- 
sooth ?  because  he  was  Theodore  Hook,  thoughtless  and  fool- 
ish to  the  last.  The  jester  of  the  people  must  needs  be  a  fool. 
Let  him  take  it  to  his  conscience  that  he  was  not  as  much  a 
knave. 


THE  END.  431 

Iii  his  latter  years  Hook  took  to  the  two  dissipations  most 
likely  to  bring  him  into  misery — play  and  drink.  He  was  ut- 
terly unfitted  for  the  former,  being  too  gay  a  spirit  to  sit  down 
and  calculate  chances.  He  lost  considerably,  and  the  more  he 
lost  the  more  he  played.  Drinking  became  almost  a  necessity 
with  him.  He  had  a  reputation  to  keep  up  in  society,  and  had 
not  the  moral  courage  to  retire  from  it  altogether.  Writing, 
improvising,  conviviality,  play,  demanded  stimulants.  His 
mind  was  overworked  in  every  sense.  He  had  recourse  to 
the  only  remedy,  and  in  drink  he  found  a  temporary  relief 
from  anxiety,  and  a  short-lived  sustenance.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  this  man,  who  had  amused  London  circles  for  many  years, 
hastened  his  end  by  drinking. 

It  is  not  yet  twenty  years  since  Theodore  Hook  died.  He 
left  the  world  on  August  the  24th,  1841,  and  by  this  time  he 
remains  in  the  memory  of  men  only  as  a  wit  that  was,  a  pun- 
ster, a  hoaxer,  a  story-jester,  with  an  ample  fund  of  fun,  but 
not  as  a  great  man  in  any  way.  Allowing  every  thing  for  his 
education — the  times  he  lived  in,  and  the  unhappy  error  of  his 
early  life — we  may  admit  that  Hook  was  not,  in  character,  the 
worst  of  the  wits.  He  died  in  no  odor  of  sanctity,  but  he  was 
not  a  blasphemer  or  reviler,  like  others  of  his  class.  He  ig- 
nored the  bond  of  matrimony,  yet  he  remained  faithful  to  the 
woman  he  had  betrayed ;  he  was  undoubtedly  careless  in  the 
one  responsible  office  with  which  he  was  intrusted,  yet  he  can 
not  be  taxed,  taking  all  in  all,  with  deliberate  peculation.  His 
drinking  and  playing  were  bad — very  bad.  His  improper  con- 
nection was  bad — very  bad ;  but  perhaps  the  worst  feature  in 
his  career  was  his  connection  with  "  John  Bull,"  and  his  ready 
giving  in  to  a  system  of  low  libel.  There  is  no  excuse  for  this 
but  the  necessity  of  living ;  but  Hook,  had  he  retained  any 
principle,  might  have  made  enough  to  live  upon  in  a  more 
honest  manner.  His  name  does,  certainly,  not  stand  out  well 
among  the  wits  of  this  country,  but,  after  all,  since  all  were  so 
bad,  Hook  may  be  excused  as  not  being  the  worst  of  them. 
JRequiescat  in  pace. 


SYDNEY  SMITH, 

"SMITH'S  reputation"  —  to  quote  from  Lord  Cockburn's 
" Memorials  of  Edinburgh" — "here,  then,  was  the  same  as  it 
has  been  throughout  his  life,  that  of  a  wise  wit."  A  wit  he 
was,  but  we  must  deny  him  the  reputation  of  being  a  beau. 
For  that,  nature,  no  less  than  his  holy  office,  had  disqualified 
him.  Who  that  ever  beheld  him  in  a  London  drawing-room, 
when  he  went  to  so  many  dinners  that  he  used  to  say  he  was 
a  walking  patty — who  could  ever  miscall  him  a  beau  ?  How 
few  years  have  we  numbered  since  one  perceived  the  large 
bulky  form  in  canonical  attire — the  plain,  heavy,  almost  ugly 
face,  large,  long,  unredeemed  by  any  expression,  except  that  of 
sound  hard  sense — and  thought,  "  can  this  be  the  Wit  ?"  How 
few  years  is  it  since  Henry  Cockburn,  hating  London,  and  com- 
ing but  rarely  to  what  he  called  the  "  devil's  drawing-room," 
stood  near  him,  yet  apart,  for  he  was  the  most  diffident  of 
men ;  his  wonderful  luminous  eyes,  his  clear,  almost  youthful, 
vivid  complexion,  contrasting  brightly  with  the  gray,  pallid, 
prebendal  complexion  of  Sydney"?  how  short  a  time  since 
Francis  Jeffrey,  the  smallest  of  great  men,  a  beau  in  his  old 
age,  a  wit  to  the  last,  stood  hat  in  hand  to  bandy  words  with 
Sydney  ere  he  rushed  off  to  some  still  gayer  scene,  some  more 
fashionable  circle :  yet  they  are  all  gone — gone  from  sight,  liv- 
ing in  memory  alone. 

Perhaps  it  was  time :  they  might  have  lived,  indeed,  a  few 
short  years  longer ;  we  might  have  heard  their  names  among 
us ;  listened  to  their  voices ;  gazed  upon  the  deep  hazel,  ever- 
sparkling  eyes,  that  constituted  the  charm  of  Cockburn's  hand- 
some face,  and  made  all  other  faces  seem  tame  and  dead :  we 
might  have  marveled  at  the  ingenuity,  the  happy  turns  of  ex- 
pression, the  polite  sarcasm  of  Jeffrey ;  we  might  have  reveled 
in  Sydney  Smith's  immense  natural  gift  of  fun,  and  listened  to 
the  "  wise  wit,"  regretting,  with  Lord  Cockburn,  that  so  much 
worldly  wisdom  seemed  almost  inappropriate  in  one  who  should 
have  been  in  some  freer  sphere  than  within  the  pale  of  holy 
orders :  we  might  have  done  this,  but  the  picture  might  have 
been  otherwise.  Cockburn,  whose  intellect  rose,  and  became 
almost  sublime,  as  his  spirit  neaped  death,  might  have  sunk 
into  the  depression  of  conscious  weakness ;  Jeffrey  might  have 
repeated  himself,  or  turned  hypochondriacal ;  Sydney  Smith 


434  ODDITIES    OF   THE   FATHEK. 

have  grown  garrulous :  let  us  not  grieve ;  they  went  in  their 
prime  of  intellect,  before  one  quality  of  mind  had  been  touched 
by  the  frost-bite  of  age. 

Sydney  Smith's  life  is  a  chronicle  of  literary  society.  He 
was  born  in  17  71,  and  he  died  in  1845.  What  a  succession  of 
great  men  does  that  period  comprise !  Scott,  Jeffrey,  Mackin- 
tosh, Dugald  Stewart,  Horner,  Brougham,  and  Cockburn  were 
his  familiars — a  constellation  which  has  set,  we  fear,  forever. 
Our  world  presents  nothing  like  it:  we  must  look  back,  not 
around  us,  for  strong  minds,  cultivated  up  to  the  nicest  point. 
Our  age  is  too  diffused,  too  practical  for  us  to  hope  to  witness 
again  so  grand  a  spectacle. 

From  his  progenitors  Sydney  Smith  inherited  one  of  his 
best  gifts,  great  animal  spirits — the  only  spirits  one  wants  in 
this  racking  life  of  ours ;  and  his  were  transmitted  to  him  by 
his  father.  That  father,  Mr.  Robert  Smith,  was  odd  as  well  as 
clever.  His  oddities  seem  to  have  been  coupled  with  folly; 
but  that  of  Sydney  was  soberized  by  thought,  and  swayed  by 
intense  common  sense.  The  father  had  a  mania  for  buying 
and  altering  places :  one  need  hardly  say  that  he  spoiled  them. 
Having  done  so,  he  generally  sold  them ;  and  nineteen  various 
places  were  thus  the  source  of  expense  to  him  and  of  injury  to 
the  pecuniary  interests  of  his  family. 

This  strange  spendthrift  married  a  Miss  Olier,  the  daughter 
of  a  French  emigrant  from  Languedoc.  Every  one  may  re- 
member the  charming  attributes  given  by  Miss  Kavanagh,  in 
her  delicious  tale, "  Nathalie,"  to  the  French  women  of  the 
South.  This  Miss  Olier  seems  to  have  realized  all  one's  ideas 
of  the  handsome,  sweet-tempered,  high-minded  Southrons  of 
la  belle  France.  To  her  Sydney  Smith  traced  his  native  gay- 
ety ;  her  beauty  did  not,  certainly,  pass  to  him  as  well  as  to 
some  of  her  other  descendants.  When  Talleyrand  was  living 
in  England  as  an  emigrant,  on  intimate  terms  with  Robert 
Smith,  Sydney's  brother,  or  Bobus,  as  he  was  called  by  his  in- 
timates, the  conversation  turned  one  day  on  hereditary  beauty. 
Bobus  spoke  of  his  mother's  personal  perfections:  "Ah!  man 
ami"  cried  Talleyrand,  "  c"etait  apparemment)  monsieur :  votre 
~pere  qui  rfetait pas  bien" 

This  Bobus  was  the  schoolfellow  at  Eaton  of  Canning  and 
Frere ;  and,  with  John  Smith  and  those  two  youths,  wrote  the 
"  Microcosm."  Sydney,  on  the  other  hand,  was  placed,  on  the 
Foundation,  at  Winchester,  which  was  then  a  stern  place  of 
instruction  for  a  gay,  spirited,  hungry  boy.  Courtenay,  his 
younger  brother,  went  with  him,  but  ran  away  twice.  To  owe 
one's  education  to  charity  was,  in  those  days,  to  be  half  starved. 
Never  was  there  enough,  even  of  the  coarsest  food,  to  satisfy 


VERSE-MAKING    AT    WINCHESTER.  435 

the  boys,  and  the  urchins,  fresh  from  home,  were  left  to  fare  as 
they  might.  "  Neglect,  abuse,  and  vice  were,"  Sydney  used  to 
say, "  the  pervading  evils  of  Winchester ;  and  the  system  of 
teaching,  if  one  may  so  call  it,  savored  of  the  old  monastic  nar- 
rowness. ...  I  believe,  when  a  boy  at  school,  I  made  above  ten 
thousand  Latin  verses,  and  no  man  in  his  senses  would  dream 
of  ever  making  another  in  after-life.  So  much  for  life  and  time 
wasted."  The  verse-inciting  process  is,  nevertheless,  remorse- 
lessly carried  on  during  three  years  more  at  Oxford,  and  is 
much  oftener  the  test  of  patient  stupidity  than  of  aspiring  tal- 
ent. Yet  of  what  stupendous  importance  it  is  in  the  attain- 
ment of  scholarships  and  prizes  ;  and  how  zealous,  how  tena- 
cious are  dons  and  "coaches"  in  holding  to  that  which  far 
higher  classics,  the  Germans,  regard  with  contempt ! 

Sydney's  proficiency  promoted  him  to  be  captain  of  the 
school,  and  he  left  Winchester  for  New  College,  Oxford — one 
of  the  noblest  and  most  abused  institutions  then  of  that  grand 
university.  Having  obtained  a  scholarship,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  afterward  a  fellowship,  he  remarked  that  the  usual 
bumpers  of  port  wine  at  college  were  as  much  the  order  of  the 
day  among  the  Fellows  as  Latin  verses  among  the  under-grad- 
uates.  We  may  not,  however,  picture  to  ourselves  Sydney  as 
partaking  in  the  festivities  of  the  common  room ;  with  more 
probability  let  us  imagine  him  wandering  with  steady  gait, 
even  after  Hall — a  thing  not  either  then  or  now  certain  in  col- 
leges— in  those  evergreen,  leafy,  varied  gardens,  flanked  by 
that  old  St.  Peter's  church  on  the  one  side,  and  guarded  by 
the  high  wall,  once  a  fortification,  on  the  other.  He  was  poor, 
and  therefore  safe,  for  poverty  is  a  guardian  angel  to  an  under- 
graduate, and  work  may  protect  even  the  Fellow  from  utter 
deterioration. 

He  was  turned  out  into  the  world  by  his  father  with  his 
hundred  a  year  from  the  Fellowship,  and  never  had  a  farthing 
from  the  old  destroyer  of  country-seats  afterward.  He  never 
owed  a  sixpence ;  nay,  he  paid  a  debt  of  thirty  pounds,  which 
Courtenay,  who  had  no  iron  in  his  character,  had  incurred  at 
Winchester,  and  had  not  the  courage  to  avow.  The  next  step 
was  to  choose  a  profession.  The  bar  would  have  been  Syd- 
ney's choice ;  but  the  Church  was  the  choice  of  his  father.  It 
is  the  cheapest  channel  by  which  a  man  may  pass  into  genteel 
poverty;  "wit  and  independence  do  not  make  bishops,"  as 
Lord  Cockburn  remarks.  We  do  not,  however,  regard,  as  he 
does,  Sydney  Smith  as  "  lost"  by  being  a  churchman.  He  was 
happy,  and  made  others  happy ;  he  was  good,  and  made  others 
good.  Who  can  say  the  same  of  a  successful  barrister,  or  of 
a  popular  orator  ?  His  first  sphere  was  in  a  curacy  on  Salis- 


436  OLD   EDINBURGH. 

bury  Plain;  one  of  his  earliest  clerical  duties  was  to  marry  his 
brother  Robert  (a  barrister)  to  Miss  Vernon,  aunt  to  Lord 
Lansdown.  "  All  I  can  tell  you  of  the  marriage,"  Sydney  wrote 
to  his  mother,  "  is  that  he  cried,  she  cried,  I  cried."  It  was 
celebrated  in  the  library  at  Bowood,  where  Sydney  so  often 
enchanted  the  captivating  circle  afterward  by  his  wit. 

Nothing  could  be  more  gloomy  than  the  young  pastor's  life 
on  Salisbury  Plain :  "  the  first  and  poorest  pauper  of  the  ham- 
let," as  he  calls  a  curate,  he  was  seated  down  among  a  few 
scattered  cottages  on  this  vast  flat ;  visited  even  by  the  butch- 
er's cart  only  once  a  week  from  Salisbury ;  accosted  by  few 
human  beings ;  shunned  by  all  who  loved  social  life.  But  the 
probation  was  not  long ;  and  after  being  nearly  destroyed  by 
a  thunder-storm  in  one  of  his  rambles,  he  quitted  Salisbury 
Plain,  after  two  years,  for  a  more  genial  scene. 

There  was  a  hospitable  squire,  a  Mr.  Beach,  living  in  Smith's 
parish ;  the  village  of  Netherhaven,  near  Amesbury.  Mr.  Beach 
had  a  son ;  the  quiet  Sundays  at  the  Hall  were  enlivened  by 
the  curate's  company  at  dinner,  and  Mr.  Beach  found  his  guest 
both  amusing  and  sensible,  and  begged  him  to  become  tutor 
to  the  young  squire.  Smith  accepted ;  and  went  away  with 
his  pupil,  intending  to  visit  Germany.  The  French  Revolu- 
tion was,  however,  at  its  height.  Germany  was  impracticable, 
and  "  we  were  driven,"  Sydney  wrote  to  his  mother,  "  by  stress 
of  politics,  into  Edinburgh." 

This  accident — this  seeming  accident — was  the  foundation 
of  Sydney  Smith's  opportunities  ;  not  of  his  success,  for  that 
his  own  merits  procured,  but  of  the  direction  to  which  his 
efforts  were  applied.  He  would  have  been  eminent  wherever 
destiny  had  led  him ;  but  he  was  thus  made  to  be  useful  in 
one  especial  manner :  "  his  lines  had,  indeed,  fallen  in  pleasant 
places." 

Edinburgh,  in  1797,  was  not,  it  is  almost  needless  to  say,  the 
Edinburgh  of  1860.  An  ancient,  picturesque,  high-built  look- 
ing city,  with  its  wynds  and  closes,  it  had  far  more  the  char- 
acteristics of  an  old  French  mile  de  Province  than  of  a  north- 
ern capital.  The  foundation-stone  of  the  new  College  was  laid 
in  1789,  but  the  building  was  not  finished  until  more  than  for- 
ty years  afterward.  The  edifice  then  stood  in  the  midst  of 
fields  and  gardens.  "  Often,"  writes  Lord  Cockburn,  "  did  we 
stand  to  admire  the  blue  and  yellow  crocuses  rising  through 
the  clean  earth  in  the  first  days  of  spring,  in  the  house  of  Doc- 
tor Monro  (the  second),  whose  house  stood  in  a  small  field  en- 
tering from  Nicolson  street,  within  less  than  a  hundred  yards 
from  the  college." 

The  New  Town  was  in  progress  when  Sydney  Smith  and 


ITS   SOCIAL   AND   ARCHITECTURAL   FEATURES.  437 

his  pupil  took  refuge  in  "Auld  Reekie."  With  the  rise  of 
every  street  so_me  fresh  innovation  in  manners  seemed  also  to 
begin.  Lord  Cockburn,  wedded  as  he  was  to  his  beloved 
Reekie,  yet  unprejudiced  and  candid  in  all  points,  ascribes  the 
change  in  customs  to  the  intercourse  with  the  English,  and 
seems  to  date  it  from  the  Union.  Thus  the  overflowing  of  the 
old  town  into  fresh  spaces  "  implied,"  as  he  remarks, "  a  gen- 
eral alteration  of  our  habits." 

As  the  dwellers  in  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain  regard  their 
neighbors  across  the  Seine,  in  the  Faubourg  St.  Honore,  with 
disapproving  eyes,  so  the  sojourners  in  the  Canongate  and  the 
Cowgate  considered  that  the  inundation  of  modern  popula- 
tion vulgarized  their  "prescriptive  gentilities."  Cockburn's 
description  of  a  Scottish  assembly  in  the  olden  time  is  most 
interesting. 

"  For  example,  Saint  Cecilia's  Hall  was  the  only  public  re- 
sort of  the  musical;  and,  besides  being  our  most  selectly  fash- 
ionable place  of  amusement,  was  the  best  and  most  beautiful 
concert-room  I  have  ever  seen.  And  there  have  I  myself  seen 
most  of  our  literary  and  fashionable  gentlemen,  predominating 
with  their  side  curls  and  frills,  and  ruffles,  and  silver  buckles ; 
and  our  stately  matrons  stiffened  in  hoops,  and  gorgeous  satin ; 
and  our  beauties  with  high-heeled  shoes,  powdered  and  poma- 
tumed hair,  and  lofty  and  composite  head-dresses.  All  this 
was  in  the  Cowgate ;  the  last  retreat  nowadays  of  destitution 
and  disease.  The  building  still  stands,  though  raised  and 
changed.  When  I  last  saw  it,  it  seemed  to  be  partly  an  old- 
clothesman's  shop  and  partly  a  brazier's."  Balls  were  held  in 
the  beautiful  rooms  of  George  Square,  in  spite  of  the  "  New 
Town  piece  of  presumption,"  that  is,  an  attempt  to  force  the 
fashionable  dancers  of  the  reel  into  the  George  Street  apart- 
ments. 

"And  here,"  writes  Lord  Cockburn,  looking  back  to  the 
days  when  he  was  that  "ne'er-do-weel"  Harry  Cockburn, 
"  were  the  last  remains  of  the  ball-room  discipline  of  the  pre- 
ceding age.  Martinet  dowagers  and  venerable  beaux  acted 
as  masters  and  mistresses  of  ceremonies,  and  made  all  the  pre- 
liminary arrangements.  No  couple  could  dance  unless  each 
party  was  provided  with  a  ticket  prescribing  the  precise  place, 
in  the  precise  dance.  If  there  was  no  ticket,  the  gentleman  or 
the  lady  was  dealt  with  as  an  intruder,  and  turned  out  of  the 
dance.  If  the  ticket  had  marked  upon  it — say  for  a  country- 
dance,  the  figures  3,  5,  this  meant  that  the  holder  was  to  place 
himself  in  the  3d  dance,  and  5th  from  the  top ;  and  if  he  was 
any  where  else,  he  was  set  right  or  excluded.  And  the  part- 
ner's ticket  must  correspond.  Woe  on  the  poor  girl  who,  with 


438  MAKING   LOVE   METAPHYSICALLY. 

ticket  2,  7,  was  found  opposite  a  youth  marked  5,  9 !  It  was 
flirting  without  a  license,  and  looked  very  ill,  ajid  would  prob- 
ably be  reported  by  the  ticket  director  of  that  dance  to  the 
mother." 

All  this  had  passed  away ;  and  thus  the  aristocracy  of  a  few 
individuals  was  ended  ;  and  society,  freed  from  some  of  its  re- 
straints, flourished  in  another  and  more  enlightened  way  than 
formerly. 

There  were  still  a  sufficient  number  of  peculiarities  to  grat- 
ify one  who  had  an  eye  to  the  ludicrous.  Sydney  Smith  soon 
discovered  that  it  is  a  work  of  time  to  impart  a  humorous  idea 
to  a  true  Scot.  "It  requires,"  he  used  to  say,  "a  surgical 
operation  to  get  a  joke  well  into  a  Scotch  understanding." 
"  They  are  so  imbued  with  metaphysics,  that  they  even  make 
love  metaphysically.  I  overheard  a  young  lady  of  my  ac- 
quaintance, at  a  dance  in  Edinburgh,  exclaim  in  a  sudden  pause 
of  the  music, '  What  you  say,  my  Lord,  is  very  true  of  love  in 
the  abstract,  but — '  here  the  fiddlers  began  fiddling  furiously, 
and  the  rest  was  lost."  He  was,  however,  most  deeply  touched 
by  the  noble  attribute  of  that  nation  which  retains  what  is  so 
rare — the  attribute  of  being  true  friends.  He  did  ample  jus- 
tice to  their  kindliness  of  heart.  "  If  you  meet  with  an  acci- 
dent," he  said,  "  half  Edinburgh  immediately  flocks  to  your 
doors  to  inquire  after  your  pure  hand,  or  your  pure  foot." 
"  Their  temper,"  he  observed,  "  stands  any  thing  but  an  attack 
on  their  climate ;  even  Jeffrey  can  not  shake  off  the  illusion 
that  myrtles  flourish  at  Craig  Crook."  The  sharp  reviewer 
stuck  to  his  myrtle  allusions,  and  treated  Smith's  attempts  with 
as  much  contempt  as  if  he  had  been  a  "  wild  visionary,  who 
had  never  breathed  his  caller  air,"  nor  suffered  under  the  rigors 
of  his  climate,  nor  spent  five  years  in  "  discussing  metaphysics 
and  medicine  in  that  garret  end  of  the  earth — that  knuckle 
end  of  England — that  land  of  Calvin,  oat-cakes,  and  sulphur," 
as  Smith  termed  Scotland. 

During  two  years  he  braved  the  winters  in  which  he  de- 
clared hackney-coaches  were  drawn  by  four  horses  on  account 
of  the  snow ;  where  men  were  blown  flat  down  on  the  face 
by  the  winds ;  and  where  even  "  experienced  Scotch  fowls 
did  not  dare  to  cross  the  streets,  but  sidled  along,  tails  aloft, 
without  venturing  to  encounter  the  gale."  He  luxuriated, 
nevertheless,  in  the  true  Scotch  supper,  than  which  nothing 
more  pleasant  and  more  unwholesome  has  ever  been  known  in 
Christendom.  Edinburgh  is  said  to  have  been  the  only  place 
where  people  dined  twice  a  day.  The  writer  of  this  memoir 
is  old  enough  to  remember  the  true  Scottish  Attic  supper  be- 
fore its  final  "  fading  into  wine  and  water,"  as  Lord  Cockburn 


THE    MEN    OF    MARK    PASSING    AWAY.  439 

describes  its  decline.  "  Suppers,"  Cockburn  truly  says,  "  are 
cheaper  than  dinners,"  and  Edinburgh,  at  that  time,  was  the 
cheapest  place  in  Great  Britain.  Port  and  sherry  were  the  sta- 
ple wines ;  claret,  duty  free  in  Scotland  until  1780,  was  indeed 
beginning  to  be  a  luxury ;  it  was  no  longer  the  ordinary  bev- 
erage, as  it  was  when — as  Mackenzie,  the  author  of  the  "Man 
of  Feeling,"  described — it  used,  upon  the  arrival  of  a  cargo, 
to  be  sent  through  the  town  on  a  cart  with  a  horse  before  it, 
so  that  every  one  might  have  a  sample,  by  carrying  a  jug  to 
be  filled  for  sixpence :  still  even  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  was  in  frequent  use.  Whisky  toddy  and  plotty  (red 
wine  mulled  with  spices)  came  into  the  supper-room  in  ancient 
flagons  or  stoups,  after  a  lengthy  repast  of  broiled  chickens, 
roasted  moorfowl,  pickled  mussels,  flummery,  and  numerous 
other  good  things  had  been  discussed  by  a  party  who  ate  as 
if  they  had  not  dined  that  day.  "  We  will  eat,"  Lord  Cock- 
burn  used  to  say  after  a  long  walk,  "  a  profligate  supper,"  a 
supper  without  regard  to  discretion  or  digestion ;  and  he  usu- 
ally kept  his  word. 

In  Edinburgh,  Sydney  Smith  formed  the  intimate  acquaint- 
ance of  Lord  Jeffrey,  and  that  acquaintance  ripened  into  a 
friendship  only  closed  by  death.  The  friendship  of  worthy, 
sensible  men  he  looked  upon  as  one  of  the  greatest  pleasures 
in  life. 

The  "  old  suns,"  Lord  Cockburn  tells  us,  "  were  setting  when 
the  band  of  great  thinkers  and  great  writers,  who  afterward 
concocted  the  '  Edinburgh  Review,'  were  rising  into  celebrity." 
Principal  Robertson,  the  historian,  had  departed  this  life  in 
1793,  a  kindly  old  man.  With  beaming  eyes  underneath  his 
frizzed  and  curled  wig,  and  a  trumpet  tied  with  a  black  ribbon 
to  the  button-hole  of  his  coat,  for  he  was  deaf,  this  ftiost  excel- 
lent of  writers  showed  how  he  could  be  also  the  most  zealous 
of  diners.  Old  Adam  Ferguson,  the  historian  of  Rome,  had 
"  set"  also :  one  of  the  finest  specimens  of  humanity  had  gone 
from  among  his  people  in  him.  Old  people,  not  thirty  years 
ago,  delighted  to  tell  you  how  "  Adam,"  when  chaplain  to  the 
Black  Watch,  that  glorious  42d,  refused  to  retire  to  his  prop- 
er' place,  the  rear,  during  an  action,  but  persisted  in  being  en- 
faged  in  front.  He  was  also  gone ;  and  Dugald  Stewart  filled 
is  vacant  place  in  the  professorship  of  moral  philosophy.  Dr. 
Henry,  the  historian,  was  also  at  rest :  after  a  long,  laborious 
life,  and  the  compilation  of  a  dull,  though  admirable  History 
of  England,  the  design  of  which,  in  making  a  chapter  on  arts, 
manners,  and  literature  separate  from  the  narrative,  appears  to 
have  suggested  to  Macaulay  his  inimitable  disquisition  on  the 
same  topics.  Dr.  Henry  showed  to  a  friend  a  pile  of  books 


440  THE   BAND    OF   YOUNG   SPIRITS. 

which  he  had  gone  through  merely  to  satisfy  himself  and  the 
world  as  to  what  description  of  trowsers  was  worn  by  the 
Saxons.  His  death  was  calm  as  his  life.  "  Come  out  to  me 
directly,"  he  wrote  to  his  friend,  Sir  Harry  Moncrieff:  "  I  have 
got  something  to  do  this  week ;  I  have  got  to  die." 

It  was  in  1801  that  Dugald  Stewart  began  his  course  of 
lectures  on  political  economy.  Hitherto  all  public  favor  had 
been  on  the  side  of  the  Tories,  and  independence  of  thought 
was  a  sure  way  to  incur  discouragement  from  the  Bench,  in 
the  Church,  and  from  every  government  functionary.  Lec- 
tures on  political  economy  were  regarded  as  innovations ;  but 
they  formed  a  forerunner  of  that  event  which  had  made  sev- 
eral important  changes  in  our  literary  and  political  hemisphere : 
the  commencement  of  the  "  Edinburgh  Review."  This  under- 
taking was  the  work  of  men  who  were  separated  from  the 
mass  of  their  brother-townsmen  by  their  politics,  their  isola- 
tion as  a  class  binding  them  the  more  closely  together  by  links 
never  broken,  in  a  brotherhood  of  hope  and  ambition  to  which 
the  natural  spirits  of  Sydney  Smith,  of  Cockburn,  and  of  Jef- 
frey gave  an  irresistible  charm. 

Among  those  who  the  most  early  in  life  ended  a  career  of 
promise  was  Francis  Horner.  He  was  the  son  of  a  linen-dra- 
per in  Edinburgh ;  or,  as  the  Scotch  called  it,  following  the 
French,  a  merchant.  Homer's  best  linen  for  sheets,  and  table- 
cloths, and  all  the  under  garments  of  housekeeping,  are  still 
highly  esteemed  by  the  trade. 

"  My  desire  to  know  Horner,9'  Sydney  Smith  states, "  arose 
from  my  being  cautioned  against  him  by  some  excellent  and 
feeble-minded  people  to  whom  I  brought  letters  of  introduc- 
tion, and  who  represented  him  as  a  person  of  violent  political 
opinions." '  Sydney  Smith  interpreted  this  to  mean  that  Hor- 
ner was  a  man  who  thought  for  himself;  who  loved  truth  bet- 
ter than  he  loved  Dundas  (Lord  Melville),  then  the  tyrant  of 
Scotland.  "It  is  very  curious  to  consider,"  Sydney  Smith 
wrote,  in  addressing  Lady  Holland,  in  1817,  "in  what  manner 
Horner  gained,  in  so  extraordinary  a  degree,  the  affections  of 
such  a  number  of  persons  of  both  sexes — all  ages,  parties,  and 
ranks  in  society ;  for  he  was  not  remarkably  good-tempered, 
nor  particularly  lively  and  agreeable ;  and  an  inflexible  poli- 
tician on  the  unpopular  side.  The  causes  are,  his  high  charac- 
ter for  probity,  honor,  and  talents ;  his  fine  countenance  ;  the 
benevolent  interest  he  took  in  the  concerns  of  all  his  friends ; 
his  simple  and  gentlemanlike  manners ;  his  untimely  death." 
"  Grave,  studious,  honorable,  kind,  every  thing  Horner  did," 
says  Lord  Cockburn,  "was  marked  by  thoughtfulness  and 
kindness;"  a  beautiful  character,  which  was  exhibited  but 


BROUGHAM  S    EARLY    TENACITY.  441 

briefly  to  his  contemporaries,  but  long  remembered  after  his 
death. 

Henry  Brougham  was  another  of  the  Edinburgh  band  of 
young  spirits.  He  was  educated  in  the  High  School  under 
Luke  Fraser,  the  tutor  who  trained  Walter  Scott  and  Francis 
Jeffrey.  Brougham  used  to  be  pointed  out  "as  the  fellow 
who  had  beat  the  master."  He  had  dared  to  differ  with  Fra- 
ser, a  hot  pedant,  on  some  piece  of  Latinity.  Fraser,  irritated, 
punished  the  rebel,  and  thought  the  matter  ended.  But  the 
next  day  "  Harry,"  as  they  called  him,  appeared,  loaded  with 
books,  renewed  the  charge,  and  forced  Luke  to  own  that  he 
was  beaten.  "It  was  then,"  says  Lord  Cockburn,  "that  I 
first  saw  him." 

After  remaining  two  years  in  Edinburgh,  Sydney  Smith 
went  southward  to  marry  a  former  schoolfellow  of  his  sister 
Maria's — a  Miss  Pybus,  to  whom  he  had  been  attached  and 
engaged  at  a  very  early  period  of  his  life.  The  young  lady, 
who  was  of  West  Indian  descent,  had  some  fortune ;  but  her 
husband's  only  stock,  on  which  to  begin  housekeeping,  consist- 
ed of  six  silver  tea-spoons,  worn  away  with  use.  One  day  he 
rushed  into  the  room  and  threw  these  attenuated  articles  into 
her  lap :  "  There,  Kate,  I  give  you  all  my  fortune,  you  lucky 
girl !" 

With  the  small  clot,  and  the  thin  silver  spoons,  the  young 
couple  set  up  housekeeping  in  the  "  garret  end  of  the  earth." 
Their  first  difficulty  was  to  know  how  money  could  be  obtained 
to  begin  with,  for  Mrs.  Smith's  small  fortune  was  settled  on 
herself  by  her  husband's  wish.  Two  rows  of  pearls  had  been 
given  her  by  her  thoughtful  mother.  These  she  converted 
into  money,  and  obtained  for  them  £500.  Several  years  after- 
ward, when  visiting  the  shop  at  which  she  sold  them,  with 
Miss  Vernon  and  Miss  Fox,  Mrs.  Smith  saw  her  pearls,  every 
one  of  which  she  knew.  She  asked  what  was  the  price. 
"£1500"  was  the  reply. 

The  sum,  however,  was  all  important  to  the  thrifty  couple. 
It  distanced  the  nightmare  of  the  poor  and  honest — debt. 
£750  was  presented  by  Mr.  Beach,  in  gratitude  for  the  care 
of  his  son,  to  Smith.  It  was  invested  in  the  funds,  and  formed 
the  nucleus  of  future  savings — "  Ce  rfest  que  le  premier  pas 
qui  coute"  is  a  trite  saying.  "  C'est  le  premier  pas  qui  gagne? 
might  be  applied  to  this  and  similar  cases.  A  little  daughter 
— Lady  Holland,  the  wife  of  the  celebrated  physician,  Sir  Hen- 
ry Holland — was  sent  to  bless  the  sensible  pair.  Sydney  had 
wished  that  she  might  be  born  with  one  eye,  so  that  he  might 
never  lose  her ;  nevertheless,  though  she  happened  to  be  born 
with  two,  he  bore  her  secretly  from  the  nursery,  a  few  hours 

T2 


442  "OLD  SCHOOL"  CEKEMONIES, 

after  her  birth,  to  show  her  in  triumph  to  the  future  Edinburgh 
Reviewers. 

The  birth  of  the  "  Edinburgh  Review"  quickly  followed  that 
of  the  young  lady.  Jeffrey — then  an  almost  starving  barris- 
ter, living  in  the  eighth  or  ninth  flat  of  a  house  in  Buccleuch 
Place — Brougham,  and  Sydney  Smith  were  the  triumvirate 
who  propounded  the  scheme,  Smith  being  the  first  mover.  He 
proposed  a  motto :  "  Tenui  Musam  meditamur  avena :"  We 
cultivate  literature  on  a  little  oatmeal ;  but  this  being  too  near 
the  truth,  they  took  their  motto  from  Publius  Syrus ;  u  of 
whom,"  said  Smith,  "  none  of  us  had,  I  am  sure,  read  a  single 
line."  To  this  undertaking  Sydney  Smith  devoted  his  talents 
for  more  than  twenty-eight  years. 

Meantime,  during  the  brief  remainder  of  his  stay  in  Edin- 
burgh, his  circumstances  improved.  He  had  done  that  which 
most  of  the  clergy  are  obliged  to  do — taken  a  pupil.  He  had 
now  another,  the  son  of  Mr.  Gordon,  of  Ellon  ;  for  each  of  these 
young  men  he  received  £400  a  year.  He  became  to  them  a 
father  and  a  friend  ;  he  entered  into  all  their  amusements.  One 
of  them  saying  that  he  could  not  find  conversation  at  the  balls 
for  his  partners ;  "  Never  mind,"  cried  Sydney  Smith,  "  I'll  fit 
you  up  in  five  minutes."  Accordingly,  he  wrote  down  conver- 
sations for  them  amid  bursts  of  laughter. 

Thus  happily  did  years,  which  many  persons  would  have 
termed  a  season  of  adversity,  pass  away.  The  chance  which 
brought  him  to  Edinburgh  introduced  him  to  a  state  of  soci- 
ety never  likely  to  be  seen  again  in  Scotland.  Lord  Cock- 
burn's  "  Memorials"  afford  an  insight  into  manners,  not  only 
as  regarded  suppers,  but  on  the  still  momentous  point,  of  din- 
ners. Three  o'clock  was  the  fashionable  hour  so  late  as  the 
commencement  of  the  present  century.  That  hour,  "  not  with- 
out groans  and  predictions,"  became  four — and  four  was  long 
and  conscientiously  adhered  to.  "  Inch  by  inch,"  people  yield- 
ed, and  five  continued  to  be  the  standard  polite  hour  from 
1806  to  1820.  "  Six  has  at  length  prevailed." 

The  most  punctilious  ceremony  existed.  When  dinner  was 
announced,  a  file  of  ladies  went  first  in  strict  order  of  prece- 
dence. "  Mrs.  Colonel  Such  a  One ;"  "  Mrs.  Doctor  Such  a 
One,"  and  so  on.  Toasts  were  de  rigueur  :  no  glass  of  wine 
was  to  be  taken  by  a  guest  without  comprehending  a  lady,  or 
a  covey  of  ladies.  "I  was  present,"  says  Lord  Cockburn, 
"  when  the  late  Duke  of  Buccleuch  took  a  glass  of  sherry  by 
himself  at  the  table  of  Charles  Hope,  then  Lord  Advocate,  and 
this  was  noticed  as  a  piece  of  ducal  contempt."  Toasts,  and, 
when  the  ladies  had  retired,  rounds  of  toasts,  were  drunk. 
"  The  prandial  nuisance,"  Lord  Cockburn  wrote,  "  was  horri- 
ble. But  it  was  nothing  to  what  followed." 


THE   SPECULATIVE   SOCIETY.  443 

At  these  repasts,  though  less  at  these  than  at  boisterous 
suppers,  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  same  table  with  Sydney 
Smith  was  the  illustrious  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  a  man  to 
whose  deep-thinking  mind  the  world  is  every  day  rendering 
justice.  The  son  of  a  brave  officer,  Mackintosh  was  born  on 
the  banks  of  Loch  Ness :  his  mother,  a  Miss  Fraser,  was  aunt 
to  Mrs.  Fraser  Tytler,  wife  of  Lord  Woodhouselee,  one  of  the 
judges  of  the  Court  of  Session,  and  mother  of  the  late  histo- 
rian of  that  honored  name. 

Mackintosh  had  been  studying  at  Aberdeen,  in  the  same 
classes  with  Robert  Hall,  whose  conversation,  he  avowed,  had 
a  great  influence  over  his  mind.  He  arrived  in  Edinburgh 
about  1784,  uncertain  to  what  profession  to  belong,  somewhat 
anxious  to  be  a  bookseller,  in  order  to  revel  in  "  the  paradise 
of  books ;"  he  turned  his  attention,  however,  to  medicine,  and 
became  a  Brunonian,  that  is,  a  disciple  of  John  Brown,  the 
founder  of  a  theory  which  he  followed  out  to  the  extent  in 
practice.  The  main  feature  of  the  now  defunct  system,  which 
set  scientific  Europe  in  a  blaze,  seems  to  have  been  a  mad  in- 
dulgence of  the  passions,  and  an  unbridled  use  of  intoxicating 
liquors.  Brown  fell  a  victim  to  his  vices.  Years  after  he  had 
been  laid  in  his  grave,  his  daughter,  Euphemia,  being  in  great 
indigence,  received  real  kindness  from  Sir  James  and  Lady 
Mackintosh,  the  former  of  whom  used  to  delight  in  telling  a 
story  of  her  father's  saying  to  her,  "  Eify,  bring  me  the  mood- 
erate  stimulus  of  a  hoondred  draps  o'  laudanum  in  a  glass  o' 
brandy." 

Mackintosh  had  not  quitted  Edinburgh  when  Sydney  Smith 
reached  it.  Smith  became  a  member  of  the  famous  Specula- 
tive Society.  Their  acquaintance  was  renewed  years  after- 
ward in  London.  Who  can  ever  forget  the  small,  quiet  din- 
ners given  by  Mackintosh  when  living  out  of  Parliament,  and 
out  of  office,  in  Cadogan  Place  ?  Simple  but  genial  were  those 
repasts,  forming  a  strong  contrast  to  the  Edinburgh  dinners 
of  yore.  He  had  then  long  given  up  both  the  theory  and  prac- 
tice of  the  Brunonians,  and  took  nothing  but  light  French  and 
German  wines,  and  these  in  moderation.  His  tall,  somewhat 
high-shouldered,  massive  form ;  his  calm  brow,  mild,  thought- 
ful ;  his  dignity  of  manner,  his  gentleness  to  all ;  his  vast  knowl- 
edge ;  his  wonderful  appreciation  of  excellence ;  his  discrimi- 
nation of  faults — all  combined  to  form  one  of  the  finest  speci- 
mens ever  seen  even  in  that  illustrious  period,  of  a  philosopher 
and  historian. 

Jeffrey  and  Cockburn  were  contrasts  to  one  whom  they  hon- 
ored. Jeffrey,  "  the  greatest  of  British  critics,"  was  eight 
years  younger  than  Mackintosh,  having  been  born  in  1773. 


444  A   BRILLIANT   SET. 

He  was  the  son  of  one  of  the  deputy  clerks  to  the  Supreme 
Court,  not  an  elevated  position,  though  one  of  great  respecta- 
bility. When  Mackintosh  and  Sydney  Smith  first  knew  him 
in  Edinburgh,  he  was  enduring,  with  all  the  impatience  of  his 
sensitive  nature,  what  he  called  a  "  slow,  obscure,  philosophical 
starvation"  at  the  Scotch  bar. 

"  There  are  moments,"  he  wrote,  "  when  I  think  I  could  sell 
myself  to  the  ministers  or  to  the  deyil,  in  order  to  get  above 
these  necessities."  Like  all  men  so  situated,  his  depression 
came  in  fits.  Short,  spare,  with  regular,  yet  not  aristocratic 
features,  speaking,  brilliant,  yet  not  pleasing  eyes ;  a  voice  con- 
sistent with  that  mignon  form ;  a  somewhat  precise  and  anx- 
ious manner,  there  was  never  in  Jeffrey  that  charm,  that  aban- 
don, which  rendered  his  valued  friend,  Henry  Cockburn,  the 
most  delightful,  the  most  beloved  of  men,  the  very  idol  of  his 
native  city. 

The  noble  head  of  Cockburn,  bald,  almost  in  youth,  with  its 
pliant,  refined  features,  and  its  fresh  tint  upon  a  cheek  always 
clear,  generally  high  in  color,  was  a  strong  contrast  to  the  rigid 
petitesse  of  Jeffrey's  physiognomy ;  much  more  so  to  the  large 
proportions  of  Mackintosh ;  or  to  the  ponderous,  plain,  and, 
later  in  life,  swarthy  countenance  of  Sydney  Smith.  Lord 
Webb  Seymour,  the  brother  of  the  late  Duke  of  Somerset, 
gentle,  modest,  intelligent — Thomas  Thomson,  the  antiquary 
— and  Charles  and  George  Bell,  the  surgeon  and  the  advocate 
— Murray,  afterward  Lord  Murray,  the  generous  pleader,  who 
gave  up  to  its  rightful  heirs  an  estate  left  him  by  a  client — 
and  Brougham — formed  the  staple  of  that  set  now  long  since 
extinct. 

It  was  partially  broken  up  by  Sydney  Smith's  coming,  in 
1803,  to  London.  He  there  took  a  house  in  Doughty  Street, 
being  partial  to  legal  society,  which  was  chiefly  to  be  found  in 
that  neighborhood. 

Here  Sir  Samuel  Romilly,  Mackintosh,  Scarlett  (Lord  Abin- 
ger),  the  eccentric  unhappy  Mr.  Ward,  afterward  Lord  Dud- 
ley, "  Conversation"  Sharp,  Rogers,  and  Luttrell,  formed  the 
circle  in  which  Sydney  delighted.  lie  was  still  very  poor,  and 
obliged  to  sell  the  rest  of  his  wife's  jewels ;  but  his  brother 
Robert  allowed  him  £100  a  year,  and  lent  him,  when  he  sub- 
sequently removed  into  Yorkshire,  £500. 

He  had  now  a  life  of  struggling,  but  those  struggles  were 
the  lot  of  his  early  friends  also ;  Mackintosh  talked  of  going 
to  India  as  a  lecturer ;  Smith  recommended  Jeffrey  to  do  the 
same.  Happily,  both  had  the  courage  and  the  sense  to  await 
for  better  times  at  home ;  yet  Smith's  opinion  of  Mackintosh 
was,  that  "  he  never  saw  so  theoretical  a  head  which  contained 
so  much  prnptical  understanding ;"  and  to  Jeffrey  he  wrote : 


HOLLAND    HOUSE.  445 

"  You  want  nothing  to  be  a  great  lawyer,  and  nothing  to 
be  a  great  speaker,  but  a  deeper  voice — slower  and  more  sim- 
ple utterance — more  humility  of  face  and  neck — and  a  greater 
contempt  for  esprit  than  men  who  have  so  much  in  general  at- 
tain to." 

The  great  event  of  Sydney  Smith's  first  residence  in  London 
was  his  introduction  at  Holland  House  ;  in  that  "  gilded  room 
which  furnished,"  as  he  said,  "the  best  and  most  agreeable 
society  in  the  world,"  his  happiest  hours  were  passed.  John 
Allen,  whom  Smith  had  introduced  to  Lord  Holland,  was  the 
peer's  librarian  and  friend.  Mackintosh,  who  Sydney  Smith 
thought  only  wanted  a  few  bad  qualities  to  get  on  in  the  world, 
Rogers,  Luttrell,  Sheridan,  Byron,  were  among  the  "suns"  that 
shone  where  Addison  had  suffered  and  studied. 

Between  Lord  Holland  and  Sydney  Smith  the  most  cordial 
friendship  existed  ;  and  the  eccentric  and  fascinating  Lady  Hol- 
land was  his  constant  correspondent.  Of  this  able  woman  it 
was  said  by  Talleyrand :  "Elle  est  toute  assertion  •  mais  quand 
on  demande  la  preuve  c'est  la  son  secret."  Of  Lord  Holland, 
the  keen  diplomatist  observed  :  "  C'est  la  bienveillance  meme^ 
mais  la  bienveillance  la  plus  perturbatrice,  qu?on  ait  jamais 
vice." 

Lord  Holland  did  not  commit  the  error  ascribed  by  Rogers, 
in  his  Recollections,  to  Marlay,  Bishop  of  Waterford,  who, 
when  poor,  with  an  income  of  only  £400  a  year,  used  to  give 
the  best  dinners  possible ;  but,  when  made  a  bishop,  enlarged 
his  table,  and  lost  his  fame — had  no  more  good  company — 
there  was  an  end  of  his  enjoyment:  he  had  lords  and  ladies  to 
his  table — foolish  people — foolish  men — and  foolish  women — 
and  there  was  an  end  of  him  and  us.  "  Lord  Holland  selected 
his  lords  and  ladies,  not  for  their  rank,  but  for  their  peculiar 
merits  or  acquirements."  Then  even  Lady  Holland's  oddities 
were  amusing.  When  she  wanted  to  get  rid  of  a  fop,  she 
used  to  say,  "  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  I  wish  you  would  sit  a 
little  farther  oft';  there  is  something  on  your  handkerchief 
which  I  don't  quite  like."  Or  when  a  poor  man  happened  to 
stand,  after  the  fashion  of  the  lords  of  creation,  with  his  back 
to  the  chimney-piece,  she  would  cry  out, "  Have  the  goodness, 
sir,  to  stir  the  fire." 

Lord  Holland  never  asked  any  one  to  dinner  ("  not  even 
me"  says  Rogers,  " whom  he  had  known  so  long")  without 
asking  Lady  Holland.  One  day,  shortly  before  his  lordship's 
death,  Rogers  was  coming  out  from  Holland  House  when  he 
met  him.  "'Well,  do  you  return  to  dinner?'  I  answered, 
'  No,  I  have  not  been  invited.' "  The  precaution,  in  fact,  was 
necessary,  for  Lord  Holland  was  so  good-natured  and  hospita- 


446  PREACHER    AT   THE    "FOUNDLING." 

ble  that  he  would  have  had  a  crowd  daily  at  his  table  had  he 
been  left  to  himself. 

The  death  of  Lord  Holland  completely  broke  up  the  unri- 
valed dinners,  and  the  subsequent  evenings  in  the  "gilded 
chamber."  Lady  Holland,  to  whom  Holland  House  was  left 
for  her  lifetime,  declined  to  live  there.  With  Holland  House, 
the  mingling  of  aristocracy  with  talent ;  the  blending  ranks  by 
force  of  intellect ;  the  assembling,  not  only  of  all  the  celebrity 
that  Europe  could  boast,  but  of  all  that  could  enhance  private 
enjoyment,  has  ceased.  London,  the  most  intelligent  of  capi- 
tals, possesses  not  one  single  great  house  in  which  pomp  and 
wealth  are  made  subsidiary  to  the  true  luxury  of  intellectual 
conversation. 

On  the  morning  of  the  day  when  Lord  Holland's  last  illness 
began,  these  lines  were  written  by  him,  and  found  after  his 
death  on  his  dressing-table : 

"  Nephew  of  Fox,  and  friend  of  Grey, 

Sufficient  for  my  fame ; 
If  those  who  know  me  best  shall  say 
I  tarnished  neither  name." 

Of  him  his  best  friend,  Sydney  Smith,  left  a  short  but  discrim- 
inative character.  "  There  was  never  (among  other  things  he 
says)  a  better  heart,  or  one  more  purified  from  all  the  bad  pas- 
sions— more  abounding  in  charity  and  compassion — or  which 
seemed  to  be  so  created  as  a  refuge  to  the  helpless  and  op- 
pressed." 

Meantime  Sydney  Smith's  circumstances  were  still  limited ; 
£50  a  year  as  evening  preacher  to  the  Foundling  Hospital 
was  esteemed  as  a  great  help  by  him.  The  writer  of  this 
memoir  remembers  an  amusing  anecdote  related  of  him  at 
the  table  of  an  eminent  literary  character  by  a  member  of 
Lord  Woodhouselee's  family,  who  had  been  desirous  to  ob- 
tain for  Sydney  the  patronage  of  the  godly.  To  this  end  she 
persuaded  Robert  Grant  and  Charles  Grant  (afterward  Lord 
Glenelg)  to  go  to  the  Foundling  to  hear  him,  she  hoped,  to 
advantage ;  to  her  consternation  he  broke  forth  into  so  famil- 
iar a  strain,  couched  in  terms  so  bordering  on  the  jocose — 
though  no  one  had  deeper  religious  convictions  than  he  had — 
that  the  two  saintly  brothers  listened  in  disgust.  They  for- 
got how  South  let  loose  the  powers  of  his  wit  and  sarcasm ; 
and  how  the  lofty-minded  Jeremy  Taylor  applied  the  force  of 
humor  to  lighten  the  prolixity  of  argument.  Sydney  Smith 
became,  nevertheless,  a  most  popular  preacher ;  but  the  man 
who  prevents  people  from  sleeping  once  a  week  in  their  pews 
is  sure  to  be  criticised. 

Let  us  turn  to  him,  however,  as  a  member  of  society.     His 


A  DKOLL   SCE^'E   AT   SYDNEY   SMITH'S. 


SYDNEY'S  "GRAMMAR  OF  LIFE." 

circle  of  acquaintance  was  enlarged,  not  only  by  his  visits  to 
Holland  House,  but  by  his  lectures  on  moral  philosophy  at  the 
Royal  Institution.  Sir  Robert  Peel,  not  the  most  impression- 
able of  men,  but  one  whose  cold  shake  of  the  hand  is  said — as 
Sydney  Smith  said  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh — "  to  have  come 
under  the  genus  Mortmain"  was  a  very  young  man  at  the 
time  when  Albemarie  Street  was  crowded  with  carriages  from 
one  end  of  the  street  to  the  other,  in  consequence  of  Sydney 
Smith's  lectures  ;  yet  he  declared  that  he  had  never  forgotten 
the  effect  given  to  the  speech  of  Logan,  the  Indian  chief,  by 
Sydney's  voice  and  manner. 

His  lectures  produced  a  sum  sufficient  for  Sydney  to  furnish 
a  house  in  Orchard  Street.  Doughty  Street — raised  to  celeb- 
rity as  having  been  the  residence,  not  only  of  Sydney  Smith, 
but  of  Charles  Dickens — was  too  far  for  the  habitue  of  Hol- 
land House  and  the  orator  of  Albemarle  Street  long  to  sojourn 
there.  In  Orchard  Street  Sydney  enjoyed  that  domestic  com- 
fort which  he  called  the  "  grammar  of  life  ;"  delightful  suppers 
to  about  twenty  or  thirty  persons,  who  came  and  went  as  they 
pleased.  A  great  part  of  the  same  amusing  and  gifted  set  used 
to  meet  once  a  week  also  at  Sir  James  Mackintosh's  at  a  supper, 
which,  though  not  exactly  Cowper's  "  radish  and  an  egg,"  was 
simple  but  plentiful — yet  most  eagerly  sought  after.  "  There 
are  few  living,"  writes  Sydney  Smith's  daughter,  "  who  can  look 
back  to  them,  and  I  have  always  found  them  do  so  with  a  sigh 
of  regret." 

One  night,  a  country  cousin  of  Sydney  Smith's  was  present 
at  a  supper.  "  Now,  Sydney,"  whispered  the  simple  girl,  "  I 
know  all  these  are  very  remarkable  people ;  do  tell  me  who 
they  are."  "  Oh,  yes ;  there's  Hannibal,"  pointing  to  a  grave, 
dry,  stern  man,  Mr.  Whishaw  ;  "  he  lost  his  leg  in  the  Cartha- 
ginian war:  there's  Socrates,"  pointing  to  Luttrell:  "that,"  he 
added,  turning  to  Homer,  "  is  Solon." 

Another  evening,  Mackintosh  brought  a  raw  Scotch  cousin 
— an  ensign  in  a  Highland  regiment — with  him.  The  young 
man's  head  could  carry  no  idea  of  glory  except  in  regiment- 
als. Suddenly,  nudging  Sir  James,  he  whispered,  "  Is  that  the 
great  Sir  Sidney  Smith?"  "Yes,  yes,"  answered  Sir  James; 
and  instantly  telling  Sydney  who  he  was  supposed  to  be,  the 
grave  evening  preacher  at  the  Foundling  immediately  assumed 
the  character  ascribed  to  him,  and  acted  the  hero  of  Acre  to 
perfection,  fighting  his  battles  over  again — even  charging  the 
Turks — while  the  young  Scot  was  so  enchanted  by  the  great 
Sir  Sidney's  condescension,  that  he  wanted  to  fetch  the  pip- 
ers of  his  regiment,  and  pipe  to  the  great  Sir  Sydney,  who  had 
never  enjoyed  the  agonizing  strains  of  the  bagpipe.  Upon  this 


450  THE   PICTURE   MANIA. 

the  party  broke  up,  and  Sir  James  carried  the  Highlander  off, 
lest  he  should  find  out  his  mistake,  and  cut  his  throat  from  shame 
and  vexation.  One  may  readily  conceive  Sydney  Smith's  en- 
joying this  joke,  for  his  spirits  were  those  of  a  boy:  his  gayety 
was  irresistible ;  his  ringing  laugh,  infectious ;  but  it  is  difficult 
for  those  who  knew  Mackintosh  in  his  later  years — the  quiet,  al- 
most pensive  invalid — to  realize  in  that  remembrance  any  trace 
of  the  Mackintosh  of  Doughty  Street  and  Orchard  Street  days. 

One  day  Sydney  Smith  came  home  with  two  hackney-coach- 
es full  of  pictures,  which  he  had  picked  up  at  an  auction.  His 
daughter  thus  tells  the  story :  "  Another  day  he  came  home 
with  two  hackney-coach  loads  of  pictures,  which  he  had  met 
with  at  an  auction,  having  found  it  impossible  to  resist  so  many 
yards  of  brown-looking  figures  and  faded  landscapes  going  for 
i  absolutely  nothing,  unheard-of  sacrifices.'  '  Kate'  hardly  knew 
whether  to  laugh  or  cry  when  she  saw  these  horribly  dingy- 
looking  objects  enter  her  pretty  little  drawing-room,  and  look- 
ed at  him  as  if  she  thought  him  half  mad;  and  half  mad  he  was, 
but  with  delight  at  his  purchase.  He  kept  walking  up  and 
down  the  room,  waving  his  arms,  putting  them  in  fresh  lights, 
declaring  they  were  exquisite  specimens  of  art,  and  if  not  by 
the  very  best  masters,  merited  to  be  so.  He  invited  his  friends, 
and  displayed  his  pictures ;  discovered  fresh  beauties  for  each 
new  comer ;  and  for  three  or  four  days,  under  the  magic  influ- 
ence of  his  wit  and  imagination,  these  gloomy  old  pictures  were 
a  perpetual  source  of  amusement  and  fun." 

At  last,  finding  that  he  was  considered  no  authority  for  the 
fine  arts,  off  went  the  pictures  to  another  auction,  but  all  re- 
christened  by  himself  with  unheard-of  names.  "  One,  I  remem- 
ber," says  Lady  Holland,  "  was  a  beautiful  landscape,  by  Nich- 
olas de  Falda,  a  pupil  of  Valdezzio,  the  only  painting  by  that  em- 
inent artist.  The  pictures  sold,  I  believe,  for  rather  less  than 
he  gave  for  them  under  their  original  names,  which  were  prob- 
ably as  real  as  their  assumed  ones." 

Sydney  Smith  had  long  been  styled  by  his  friends  the  "Bish- 
op of  Mickleham,"  in  allusion  to  his  visits  to,  and  influence  in, 
the  house  of  his  friend,  Richard  Sharp,  who  had  a  cottage  at 
that  place.  A  piece  of  real  preferment  was  now  his.  This  was 
the  living  of  Foston  le  Clay,  in  Yorkshire,  given  him  by  Lord 
Erskine,  then  Chancellor.  Lady  Holland  never  rested  till  she 
had  prevailed  on  Erskine  to  give  Sydney  Smith  a  living.  Smith, 
as  Rogers  relates,  went  to  thank  his  lordship.  "  Oh,"  said  Er- 
skine, "  don't  thank  me,  Mr.  Smith ;  I  gave  you  the  living  be- 
cause Lady  Holland  insisted  on  my  doing  so ;  and  if  she  had 
desired  me  to  give  it  to  the  devil,  he  must  have  had  it." 

Notwithstanding  the  prediction  of  the  saints,  Sydney  Smith 


THE   WIT'S   MINISTRY.  451 

proved  an  excellent  parish  priest.  Even  his  most  admiring 
friends  did  not  expect  this  result.  The  general  impression 
was,  that  he  was  infinitely  better  fitted  for  the  bar  than  for 
the  Church.  "  Ah !  Mr.  Smith,"  Lord  Stowell  used  to  say  to 
him,  "  you  would  be  in  a  far  better  situation,  and  a  far  richer 
man,  had  you  belonged  to  us." 

OuGJeu  cT esprit  more,  and  Smith  hastened  to  take  posses- 
sion of  his  living,  and  to  enter  upon  duties  of  which  no  one 
better  knew  the  mighty  importance  than  he  did. 

Among  the  Mackintosh  set  was  Richard  Sharp,  to  whom 
we  have  already  referred,  termed,  from  his  great  knowledge 
and  ready  memory,  "  Conversation  Sharp."  Many  people  may 
think  that  this  did  not  imply  an  agreeable  man,  and  they  were, 
perhaps,  right.  Sharp  was  a  plain,  ungainly  man.  One  even- 
ing, a  literary  lady,  now  living,  was  at  Sir  James  Mackin- 
tosh's, in  company  with  Sharp,  Sismondi,  and  the  late  Lord 
Denman,  then  a  man  of  middle  age.  Sir  James  was  not  only 
particularly  partial  to  Denman,  but  admired  him  personally. 
"  Do  you  not  think  Denman  handsome  ?"  he  inquired  of  the 
lady  after  the  guests  were  gone.  "  No  ?  Then  you  must  think 
Mr.  Sharp  handsome,"  he  rejoined;  meaning  that  a  taste  so  per- 
verted as  not  to  admire  Denman  must  be  smitten  with  Sharp. 
Sharp  is  said  to  have  studied  all  the  morning  before  he  went 
out  to  dinner,  to  get  up  his  wit  and  anecdote,  as  an  actor  does 
his  part.  Sydney  Smith  having  one  day  received  an  invitation 
from  him  to  dine  at  Fishmongers'  Hall,  sent  the  following  re- 

Pty: 

"  Much  do  I  love 
The  monsters  of  the  deep  to  eat ; 
To  see  the  rosy  salmon  lying, 
By  smelts  encircled,  born  for  frying ; 
And  from  the  china  boat  to  pour 
On  flaky  cod  the  flavored  shower. 
Thee  above  all  I  much  regard, 
Flatter  than  Longman's  flattest  bard, 
Much  honor'd  turbot !  sore  I  grieve 
Thee  and  thy  dainty  friends  to  leave. 
Far  from  ye  all,  in  snuggest  corner, 
I  go  to  dine  with  little  Homer; 
He  who  with  philosophic  eye 
Sat  brooding  o'er  his  Christmas  pie ; 
Then  firm  resolved,  with  either  thumb, 
Tore  forth  the  crust-enveloped  plum ; 
And  mad  with  youthful  dreams  of  deathless  fame, 
Proclaimed  the  deathless  glories  of  his  name." 

One  word  before  we  enter  on  the  subject  of  Sydney  Smith's 
ministry.  In  this  biography  of  a  great  Wit,  we  touch  but 
lightly  upon  the  graver  features  of  his  cRaracter,  yet  they  can 
not  wholly  be  passed  over.  Stanch  in  his  devotion  to  the 


452  THE   FIRST   VISIT  TO   FOSTON   LE   CLAY. 

Church  of  England,  he  was  liberal  to  others.  The  world  in 
the  present  day  is  afraid  of  liberality.  Let  it  not  be  forgotten 
that  it  has  been  the  fanatic  and  the  intolerant,  not  the  mild 
and  practical  among  us  who  have  gone  from  the  Protestant 
to  the  Romish  faith.  Sydney  Smith,  in  common  with  other 
great  men,  had  no  predilection  for  dealing  damnation  round 
the  land.  How  noble,  how  true,  are  Mackintosh's  reflections 
on  religious  sects !  "  It  is  impossible,  I  think,  to  look  into  the 
interior  of  any  religious  sect  without  thinking  better  of  it.  I 
ought,  indeed,  to  confine  myself  to  those  of  Christian  Europe, 
but  with  that  limitation  it  seems  to  me  the  remark  is  true, 
whether  I  look  at  the  Jansenists  of  Port  Royal,  or  the  Quakers 
in  Clarkson,  or  the  Methodists  in  these  journals.  All  these 
sects,  which  appear  dangerous  or  ridiculous  at  a  distance,  as- 
sume a  much  more  amicable  character  on  nearer  inspection. 
They  all  inculcate  pure  virtue,  and  practise  mutual  kindness ; 
and  they  exert  great  force  of  reason  in  rescuing  their  doctrines 
from  the  absurd  or  pernicious  consequences  which  naturally 
flow  from  them.  Much  of  this  arises  from  the  general  nature 
of  religious  principle — much  also  from  the  genius  of  the  Gos- 
pel." 

Nothing  could  present  a  greater  contrast  with  the  comforts 
of  Orchard  Street  than  the  place  on  which  Sydney  'Smith's 
"  lines"  had  now  "  fallen."  Owing  to  the  non-residence  of  the 
clergy,  one  third  of  the  parsonage-houses  in  England  had  fall- 
en into  decay,  but  that  of  Foston  le  Clay  was  pre-eminently 
wretched.  A  hovel  represented  what  was  still  called  the  par- 
sonage house  :  it  stood  on  a  glebe  of  three  hundred  acres  of 
the  stiffest  clay  in  Yorkshire :  a  brick-floored  kitchen,  with  a 
room  above  it,  both  in  a  ruinous  condition,  was  the  residence 
which,  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  had  never  been  inhabited 
by  an  incumbent.  It  will  not  be  a  matter  of  surprise  that  for 
some  time,  until  1808,  Sydney  Smith,  with  the  permission  of 
the  Archbishop  of  York,  continued  to  reside  in  London,  after 
having  appointed  a  curate  at  Foston  le  Clay. 

The  first  visit  to  his  living  was  by  no  means  promising. 
Picture  to  yourself,  my  reader,  Sydney  Smith,  in  a  carriage,  in 
his  superfine  black  coat,  driving  into  the  remote  village,  and 
parleying  with  the  old  parish  clerk,  who,  after  some  conversa- 
tion, observed,  emphatically,  striking  his  stick  on  the  ground, 
"  Master  Smith,  it  stroikes  me  that  people  as  comes  froe  Lon- 
don is  such  fools"  "  I  see  yoM.are  no  fool,"  was  the  prompt 
answer;  and  the  parson  and  the  clerk  parted  mutually  sat- 
isfied. 

The  profits  arising* from  the  sale  of  two  volumes  of  sermons 
carried  Sydney  Smith,  his  family,  and  his  furniture  to  Foston 


SYDNEY  SMITH'S  WITTY  ANSWER  TO  THE  OLD  PARISH  CLEBK. 


COUNTRY    QUIET. THE   UNIVERSAL   SCRATCHER.  455 

le  Clay  in  the  summer  of  1809,  and  he  took  up  his  abode  in  a 
pleasant  house  about  two  miles  from  York,  at  Heslington. 

Let  us  now,  for  a  time,  forget  the  wit,  the  editor  of  the 
"  Edinburgh  Review,"  the  diner  out,  the  evening  preacher  at 
the  Foundling,  and  glance  at  the  peaceful  and  useful  life  of  a 
country  gentleman.  His  spirits,  his  wit,  all  his  social  qualities, 
never  deserted  Sydney  Smith,  even  in  the  retreat  to  which  .he 
was  destined.  Let  us  see  him  driving  in  his  second-hand  car- 
riage, his  horse  "  Peter  the  Cruel,"  with  Mrs.  Smith  by  his 
side,  summer  and  winter,  from  Heslington  to  Foston  le  Clay. 
Mrs.  Smith  at  first  trembled  at  the  inexperience  of  her  chariot- 
eer; but  "she  soon,"  said  Sydney,  "raised  my  wages,  and 
considered  me  an  excellent  Jehu."  "  Mr.  Brown,"  said  Syd- 
ney to  one  of  the  tradesmen  of  York,  through  the  streets  of 
which  he  found  it  difficult  to  drive,  "  your  streets  are  the  nar- 
rowest in  Europe."  "  Narrow,  sir  ?  there's  plenty  of  room 
for  two  carriages  to  pass  each  other,  and  an  inch  and  a  half 
to  spare !" 

Let  us  see  him  in  his  busy,  peaceful  life,  digging  an  hour  or 
two  every  day  in  his  garden  to  avoid  sudden  death  by  pre- 
venting corpulency ;  then  galloping  through  a  book,  and  when 
his  family  laughed  at  him  for  so  soon  dismissing  a  quarto,  say- 
ing, "  Cross-examine  me,  then,"  and  going  well  through  the 
ordeal.  Hear  him,  after  finishing  his  morning's  writing,  say- 
ing to  his  wife,  "  There,  Kate,  it's  done ;  do  look  over  it,  put 
the  dots  to  the  i's,  and  cross  the  t's ;"  and  off"  he  went  to  his 
walk,  surrounded  by  his  children,  who  were  his  companions 
and  confidants.  See  him  in  the  lane,  talking  to  an  old  woman 
whom  he  had  taken  into  his  gig  as  she  was  returning  from 
market,  and  picking  up  all  sorts  of  knowledge  from  her ;  or 
administering  medicine  to  the  poor,  or  to  his  horses  and  ani- 
mals, sometimes  committing  mistakes  next  to  fatal.  One  day 
he  declared  he  found  all  his  pigs  intoxicated,  grunting  "  God 
save  the  King"  about  the  sty.  He  nearly  poisoned  his  red 
cow  by  an  over-dose  of  castor-oil ;  and  Peter  the  Cruel,  so 
called  because  the  groom  said  he  had  a  cruel  face,  took  two 
boxes  of  opium  pills  (boxes  and  all)  in  his  mash  without  ill 
consequences. 

See  him,  too,  rushing  out  after  dinner — for  he  had  a  horror 
of  long  sittings  after  that  meal — to  look  at  his  "  scratcher." 
He  used  to  say,  Lady  Holland  (his  daughter)  relates,  "  I  am 
all  for  cheap  luxuries,  even  for  animals ;  now  all  animals  have 
a  passion  for  scratching  their  back-bones ;  they  break  down 
your  gates  and  palings  to  effect  this.  Look !  there  is  my  uni- 
versal scratcher,  a  sharp-edged  pole,  resting  on  a  high  and  a 
low  post,  adapted  to  every  height,  from  a  horse  to  a  lamb. 


456  COUNTRY   LIFE   AND   COUNTRY   PREJUDICE. 

Even  the  Edinburgh  Reviewer  can  take  his  turn :  you  have  no 
idea  how  popular  it  is ;  I  have  not  had  a  gate  broken  since  I 
put  it  up ;  I  have  it  in  all  my  fields." 

Then  his  experiments  were  numerous.  Mutton  fat  was  to  be 
burned  instead  of  candles ;  and  working  people  were  brought 
in  and  fed  with  broth,  or  with  rice,  or  with  porridge,  to  see 
which  was  the  most  satisfying  diet.  Economy  was  made  amus- 
ing, benevolence  almost  absurd,  but  the  humorous  man,  the 
kind  man,  shone  forth  in  all  things.  He  was  one  of  the  first, 
if  not  the  first,  who  introduced  allotment-gardens  for  the  poor : 
he  was  one  who  could  truly  say  at  the  last,  when  he  had  lived 
sixty-six  years,  "  I  have  done  but  very  little  harm  in  the  world, 
and  I  have  brought  up  my  family." 

We  have  taken  a  glimpse — and  a  glimpse  merely — of  the 
"  wise  wit"  in  London,  among  congenial  society,  where  every 
intellectual  power  was  daily  called  forth  in  combative  force. 
See  him  now  in  the  provincial  circles  of  the  remote  county  of 
York.  "  Did  you  ever,"  he  once  asked,  "  dine  out  in  the  coun- 
try ?  What  misery  do  human  beings  inflict  on  each  other  un. 
der  the  name  of  pleasure !"  Then  he  describes  driving  in  a 
broiling  sun  through  a  dusty  road,  to  eat  a  haunch  of  venison 
at  the  house  of  a  neighboring  parson.  Assembled  in  a  small 
house,  "  redolent  of  frying,"  talked  of  roads,  weather,  and  tur- 
nips :  began,  that  done,  to  be  hungry.  A  stripling,  caught  up 
for  the  occasion,  calls  the  master  of  the  house  out  of  the  room, 
and  announces  that  the  cook  has  mistaken  the  soup  for  dirty 
water,  and  thrown  it  away.  No  help  for  it — agreed:  they 
must  do  without  it ;  perhaps  as  well  they  should.  Dinner  an- 
nounced ;  they  enter  the  dining-room :  heavens  !  what  a  gale ! 
the  venison  is  high ! 

Various  other  adverse  incidents  occur,  and  the  party  return 
home,  grateful  to  the  post-boys  for  not  being  drunk,  and  thank- 
ful to  Providence  for  not  being  thrown  into  a  wet  ditch. 

In  addition  to  these  troubles  and  risks,  there  was  an  enemy 
at  hand  to  apprehend — prejudice.  The  Squire  of  Heslington 
—  "  the  last  of  the  Squires"  —  regarded  Mr.  Smith  as  a  Jaco- 
bin ;  and  his  lady, "  who  looked  as  if  she  had  walked  straight  out 
of  the  Ark,  or  had  been  the  wife  of  Enoch,"  used  to  turn  aside 
as  he  passed.  When,  however,  the  squire  found  "the  peace  of 
the  village  undisturbed,  harvests  as  usual,  his  dogs  uninjured, 
he  first  bowed,  then  called,  and  ended  by  a  pitch  of  confidence ;" 
actually  discovered  that  Sydney  Smith  had  made  a  joke ;  near- 
ly went  into  convulsions  of  laughter,  and  finished  by  inviting 
the  "  dangerous  fellow,"  as  he  had  once  thought  him,  to  see  his 
dogs. 

In  1813  Sydney  Smith  removed,  as  he  thought  it  his  duty 


THE   GENIAL   MAGISTRATE.  457 

to  do,  to  Foston  le  Clay,  and,  "  not  knowing  a  turnip  from  a 
carrot,"  began  to  farm  three  hundred  acres,  and,  not  having 
any  money,  to  build  a  parsonage-house. 

It  was  a  model  parsonage,  he  thought,  the  plan  being  form- 
ed by  himself  and  "  Kate."  Being  advised  by  his  neighbors 
to  purchase  oxen,  he  bought  (and  christened)  four  oxen,  "  Tug 
and  Lug,"  "  Crawl  and  Haul."  But  Tug  and  Lug  took  to  faint- 
ing, Haul  and  Crawl  to  lie  down  in  the  mud,  so  he  was  com- 
pelled to  sell  them,  and  to  purchase  a  team  of  horses. 

The  house  plunged  him  into  debt  for  twenty  years ;  and  a 
man-servant  being  too  expensive,  the  "  wise  Wit"  caught  up 
a  country  girl,  "made  like  a  mile-stone,"  and  christened  her 
"  Bunch,"  and  Bunch  became  the  best  butler  in  the  county. 

He  next  set  up  a  carriage,  which  he  christened  the  "  Im- 
mortal," for  it  grew,  from  being  only  an  ancient  green  chariot, 
supposed  to  have  been  the  earliest  invention  of  the  kind,  to  be 
known  by  all  the  neighbors ;  the  village  dogs  barked  at  it,  the 
village  boys  cheered  it,  and  "  we  had  no  false  shame." 

One  could  linger  over  the  annals  of  Sydney  Smith's  useful, 
happy  life  at  Foston  le  Clay,  visited  there,  indeed,  by  Mack- 
intosh, and  each  day  achieving  a  higher  and  higher  reputa- 
tion in  literature.  We  see  him  as  a  magistrate,  "  no  friend  to 
game,"  as  a  country  squire  in  Suffolk  solemnly  said  of  a  neigh- 
bor, but  a  friend  to  man ;  with  a  pitying  heart,  that  forbade 
him  to  commit  young  delinquents  to  jail,  though  he  would  lec- 
ture them  severely,  and  call  out,  in  bad  cases,  "  John,  bring 
me  out  my  private  gallows"  which  brought  the  poor  boys  on 
their  knees.  We  see  him  making  visits,  and  even  tours,  in 
the  "Immortal,"  and  receiving  Lord  and  Lady  Carlisle  in  their 
coach  and  four,  which  had  stuck  in  the  middle  of  a  plowed 
field,  there  being  scarcely  any  road,  only  a  lane  up  to  the  house. 
Behold  him  receiving  his  poor  friend,  Francis  Horner,  who 
came  to  take  his  last  leave  of  him,  and  died  at  Pisa  in  1817, 
after  earning  honors  paid,  as  Sir  James  Mackintosh  remarked, 
to  intrinsic  claims  alone — "  a  man  of  obscure  birth,  who  never 
filled  an  office."  See  Sydney  Smith,  in  1816,  from  the  failure 
of  the  harvest  (he  who  was  in  London  "a  walking  patty"),  sit- 
ting down  with  his  family  to  repasts  without  bread,  thin,  un- 
leavened cakes  being  the  substitute.  See  his  cheerfulness,  his 
submission  to  many  privations :  picture  him  to  ourselves  try- 
ing to  ride,  but  falling  off  incessantly ;  but  obliged  to  leave  off 
riding  "  for  the  good  of  his  family  and  the  peace  of  his  parish" 
(he  had  christened  his  horse  Calamity).  See  him  suddenly 
prostrate  from  that  steed  in  the  midst  of  the  streets  of  York, 
"  to  the  great  joy  of  Dissenters,"  he  declares  :  another  time 
flung,  as  if  he  had  been  a  shuttlecock,  into  a  neighboring  par- 

u 


458  GLIMPSE   OF  EDINBURGH   SOCIETY. 

ish,  very  glad  that  it  was  not  a  neighboring  planet,  for  some- 
how or  other  his  horse  and  he  had  a  "  trick  of  parting  com- 
pany." "  I  used,"  he  wrote,  "  to  think  a  fall  from  a  horse 
dangerous,  but  much  experience  has  convinced  me  to  the  con- 
trary. I  have  had  six  falls  in  two  years,  and  just  behaved 
like  the  Three  per  Cents.,  when  they  fell — I  got  up  again,  and 
am  not  a  bit  the  worse  for  it,  any  more  than  the  stock  in  ques- 
tion." 

His  country  life  was  varied  by  many  visits.  In  1820  he  went 
to  visit  Lord  Grey,  then  to  Edinburgh,  to  Jeffrey.  Traveling 
by  the  coach,  a  gentleman,  with  whom  he  had  been  talking, 
said,  "There  is  a  very  clever  fellow  lives  near  here,  Sydney 
Smith,  I  believe — a  devilish  odd  fellow."  "He  may  be  an  odd 
fellow,"  cried  Sydney,  taking  off  his  hat,  "  but  here  he  is,  odd 
as  he  is,  at  your  service." 

Sydney  Smith  found  great  changes  in  Edinburgh — changes, 
however,  in  many  respects  for  the  better.  The  society  of  Ed- 
inburgh was  then  in  its  greatest  perfection.  "  Its  brilliancy," 
Lord  Cockburn  remarks,  "  was  owing  to  a  variety  of  peculiar 
circumstances,  which  only  operated  during  this  period."  The 
principal  of  these  were  "  the  survivance  of  several  of  the  emi- 
nent men  of  the  preceding  age,  and  of  curious  old  habits,  which 
the  modern  flood  had  not  yet  obliterated;  the  rise  of  a  power- 
ful community  of  young  men  of  ability  ;  the  exclusion  of  the 
British  from  the  Continent,  which  made  this  place,  both  for 
education  and  for  residence,  a  favorite  resort  of  strangers ;  the 
war,  which  maintained  a  constant  excitement  of  military  prep- 
aration and  of  military  idleness  ;  the  blaze  of  that  popular  lit- 
erature which  made  this  the  second  city  in  the  empire  for  learn- 
ing and  science ;  and  the  extent  and  the  ease  with  which  litera- 
ture and  society  embellished  each  other,  without  rivalry,  and 
without  pedantry." 

Among  the  "  best  young,"  as  his  lordship  styles  them,  were 
Lord  Webb  Seymour  and  Francis  Horner ;  while  those  of  the 
"interesting  old"  most  noted  were  Elizabeth  Hamilton  and 
Mrs.  Grant  of  Laggan,  who  had  "  unfolded  herself,"  to  bor- 
row Lord  Cockburn's  words,  in  the  "  Letters  from  the  Mount- 
ains," "  an  interesting  treasury  of  good  solitary  thoughts."  Of 
these  two  ladies,  Lord  Cockburn  says,  "  They  were  excellent- 
women,  and  not  too  blue.  Their  sense  covered  the  color."  It 
was  to  Mrs.  Hamilton  that  Jeffrey  said,  "  That  there  was  no 
objection  to  the  blue  stocking,  provided  the  petticoat  came  low 
enough  to  cover  it."  Neither  of  these  ladies  possessed  person- 
al attractions.  Mrs.  Hamilton  had  the  plain  face  proper  to  lit- 
erary women ;  Mrs.  Grant  was  a  tall,  dark  woman,  with  much 
dignity  of  manner :  in  spite  of  her  life  of  misfortune,  she  had 


A    PENSION    DIFFICULTY.  459 

a  great  flow  of  spirits.  Beautifully,  indeed,  does  Lord  Cock- 
burn  render  justice  to  her  character :  "  She  was  always  under 
the  influence  of  an  affectionate  and  delightful  enthusiasm,  which, 
unquenched  by  time  and  sorrow,  survived  the  wreck  of  many 
domestic  attachments,  and  shed  a  glow  over  the  close  of  a  very 
protracted  life." 

Both  she  and  Mrs.  Hamilton  succeeded  in  drawing  to  their 
conversazioni,  in  small  rooms  of  unpretending  style,  men  of 
the  highest  order,  as  well  as  attractive  women  of  intelligence. 
Society  in  Edinburgh  took  the  form  of  Parisian  soirees,  and, 
although  much  divided  into  parties,  was  sufficiently  general  to 
be  varied.  It  is  amusing  to  find  that  Mrs.  Grant  was  at  one 
time  one  of  the  supposed  "  Authors  of '  Waverley,' "  until  the 
disclosure  of  the  mystery  silenced  reports.  It  was  the  popu- 
larity of  "  Marmion"  that  made  Scott,  as  he  himself  confesses, 
nearly  lose  his  footing.  Mrs.  Grant's  observation  on  him,  aft- 
er meeting  the  Great  Unknown  at  some  brilliant  party,  has 
been  allowed,  even  by  the  sarcastic  Lockhart,  to  be  "  witty 
enough."  "  Mr.  Scott  always  seems  to  me  to  be  like  a  glass, 
through  which  the  rays  of  admiration  pass  without  sensibly 
affecting  it ;  but  the  bit  of  paper*  that  lies  beside  it  will  pres- 
ently be  in  a  blaze — and  no  wonder." 

Scott  endeavored  to  secure  Mrs.  Grant  a  pension ;  merited, 
as  he  observes,  by  her  as  an  authoress,  "  but  much  more,"  in 
his  opinion,  "by  the  firmness  and  elasticity  of  mind  with  which 
she  had  borne  a  great  succession  of  domestic  calamities." 
"Unhappily,"  he  adds,  "there  was  only  about  £100  open  on 
the  Pension  List,  and  this  the  minister  assigned  in  equal  por- 
tions to  Mrs.  G and  a  distressed  lady,  granddaughter  of  a 

forfeited  Scottish  .nobleman.  Mrs.  G ,  proud  as  a  High- 

landwoman,  vain  as  a  poetess,  and  absurd  as  a  blue-stocking, 
has  taken  this  partition  in  malampartem,  and  written  to  Lord 
Melville  about  her  merits,  and  that  her  friends  do  not  consider 
her  claims  as  being  fairly  canvassed,  with  something  like  a  de- 
mand that  her  petition  be  submitted  to  the  king.  This  is  not 

the  way  to  make  her  plack  a  bawbee,  and  Lord  M ,  a  little 

miffed  in  turn,  sends  the  whole  correspondence  to  me  to  know 

whether  Mrs.  G will  accept  the  £50  or  not.  Now,  hating 

to  deal  with  ladies  when  they  are  in  an  unreasonable  humor,  I 
have  got  the  good-humored  Man  of  Feeling  to  find  out  the 
lady's  mind,  and  I  take  on  myself  the  task  of  making  her  peace 

with  Lord  M .  After  all,  the  poor  lady  is  greatly  to  be 

pitied ;  her  sole  remaining  daughter  deep  and  far  gone  in  a 
decline." 

The  Man  of  Feeling  proved  successful,  and  reported  soon 
*  Alluding  to  Lady  Scott. 


460  JEFFREY   AND   COCKBURN. 

afterward  that  the  "  dirty  pudding"  was  eaten  by  the  almost 
destitute  authoress.  Scott's  tone  in  the  letters  which  refer  to 
this  subject  does  little  credit  to  his  good  taste  and  delicacy  of 
feeling,  which  were  really  attributable  to  his  character. 

Very  few  notices  occur  of  any  intercourse  between  Scott 
and  Sydney  Smith  in  Lockhart's  "  Life."  It  was  not,  indeed, 
until  1827  that  Scott  could  be  sufficiently  cooled  down  from 
the  ferment  of  politics  which  had  been  going  on  to  meet  Jef- 
frey and  Cockburn.  When  he  dined,  however,  with  Murray, 
then  Lord  Advocate,  and  met  Jeffrey,  Cockburn,  the  late  Lord 
Rutherford,  then  Mr.  Rutherford,  and  others  of  "  that  file,"  he 
pronounced  the  party  to  be  "  very  pleasant,  capital  good  cheer, 
and  excellent  wine,  much  laugh  and  fun.  I  do  not  know,"  he 
writes,  "  how  it  is,  but  when  I  am  out  with  a  party  of  my  Op- 
position friends,  the  day  is  often  merrier  than  when  with  our 
own  set.  Is  it  because  they  are  cleverer  ?  Jeffrey  and  Harry 
Cockburn  are,  to  be  sure,  very  extraordinary  men,  yet  it  is  not 
owing  to  that  entirely.  I  believe  both  parties  meet  with  the 
feeling  of  something  like  novelty.  We  have  not  worn  out  our 
jests  in  daily  contact.  There  is  also  a  disposition  on  such  oc- 
casions to  be  courteous,  and  of  course  to  be  pleased." 

On  his  side,  Cockburn  did  ample  justice  to  the  "genius  who," 
to  use  his  own  words,  "  has  immortalized  Edinburgh  and  de- 
lighted the  world."  Mrs.  Scott  could  not,  however,  recover 
the  smarting  inflicted  by  the  critiques  of  Jeffrey  on  her  hus- 
band's works.  Her  "  And  I  hope,  Mr.  Jeffrey,  Mr.  Constable 
paid  you  well  for  your  article"  (Jeffrey  dining  with  her  that- 
day),  had  a  depth  of  simple  satire  in  it  that  even  an  Edinburgh 
reviewer  could  hardly  exceed.  It  was,  one  must  add,  imperti- 
nent and  in  bad  taste.  "  You  are  very  good  at  cutting  up." 

Sydney  Smith  found  Jeffrey  and  Cockburn  rising  barristers. 
Horner,  on  leaving  Edinburgh,  had  left  to  Jeffrey  his  bar  wig, 
and  the  bequest  had  been  lucky.  Jeffrey  was  settled  at  Craig- 
crook,  a  lovely  English-looking  spot,  with  wooded  slopes  and 
green  glades,  near  Edinburgh ;  and  Cockburn  had,  since  1811, 
set  up  his  rural  gods  at  Bonally,  near  Colinton,  just  under  the 
Pentland  Hills,  and  he  wrote,  "Unless  some  avenging  angel 
shall  expel  me,  I  shall  never  leave  that  Paradise."  And  a  par- 
adise it  was.  Beneath  those  rough,  bare  hills,  broken  here 
and  there  by  a  trickling  burn,  like  a  silver  thread  on  the  brown 
sward,  stands  a  Norman  tower,  the  addition,  by  Playfair's  skill, 
to  what  was  once  a  scarcely-habitable  farm-house.  That  tower 
contained  Lord  Cockburn's  fine  library,  also  his  ordinary  sit- 
ting-rooms. There  he  read,  and  wrote,  and  received  such  so- 
ciety as  will  never  meet  again,  there  or  elsewhere — among 
them  Sydney  Smith.  Beneath — around  the  tower — stretches 


BON ALLY.  461 

a  delicious  garden,  composed  of  terraces,  and  laurel-hedged 
walks,  and  beds  of  flowers,  that  blossomed  freely  in  that  shel- 
tered spot.  A  bowling-green,  shaded  by  one  of  the  few  trees 
near  the  house,  a  sycamore,  was  the  care  of  many  an  hour ;  for, 
to  make  the  turf  velvety,  the  sods  were  fetched  from  the  hills 
above — from  "  yon  hills,"  as  Lord  Cockburn  would  have  called 
them.  And  this  was,  for  many  years,  one  of  the  rallying-points 
of  the  best  Scottish  society,  and,  as  each  autumn  came  round, 
of  what  the  host  called  his  carnival.  Friends  were  summoned 
from  the  north  and  the  south — "death  no  apology."  High 
jinks  within  doors,  excursions  without.  Every  Edinburgh 
man  reveres  the  spot,  hallowed  by  the  remembrance  of  Lord 
Cockburn.  "  Every  thing  except  the  two  burns,"  he  wrote, 
"  the  few  old  trees,  and  the  mountains,  are  my  own  work. 
Human  nature  is  incapable  of  enjoying  more  happiness  than 
lias  been  my  lot  here.  I  have  been  too  happy,  and  often  trem- 
ble in  the  anticipation  that  the  cloud  must  come  at  last."  And 
come  it  did ;  but  found  him  not  unprepared,  although  the  bur- 
den that  he  had  to  bear  in  after  life  was  heavy.  In  their  en- 
larged and  philosophic  minds,  in  their  rapid  transition  from 
sense  to  nonsense,  there  was  an  affinity  in  the  character  of 
Sydney  Smith  and  of  Lord  Cockburn  which  was  not  carried 
out  in  any  other  point.  Smith's  conversation  was  wit — Lord 
Cockburn's  was  eloquence. 

From  the  festivities  of  Edinburgh  Sydney  Smith  returned 
contentedly  to  Foston  le  Clay  and  to  Bunch.  Among  other 
gifted  visitors  was  Mrs.  Marcet.  "  Come  here,  Bunch,"  cries 
Sydney  Smith  one  day ;  "  come  and  repeat  your  crimes  to  Mrs. 
Marcet."  Then  Bunch,  grave  as  a  judge,  began  to  repeat : 
"  Plate-snatching,  gravy-spilling,  door-slamming,  blue-bottle- 
fly  catching,  and  courtesy-bobbing."  "Blue-bottle-fly  catch- 
ing" means  standing  with  her  mouth  open,  and  not  attending ; 
and  "  courtesy-bobbing"  was  courtesying  to  the  centre  of  the 
earth. 

One  night  in  the  winter,  during  a  tremendous  snow-storm, 
Bunch  rushed  in,  exclaiming,  "  Lord  and  Lady  Mackincrush  is 
com'd  in  a  coach  and  four."  The  lord  and  lady  proved  to  be 
Sir  James  and  his  daughter,  who  had  arrived  to  stay  with  his 
friends  in  the  remote  parsonage  of  Foston  le  Clay  a  few  days, 
and  had  sent  a  letter,  which  arrived  the  day  afterward,  to  an- 
nounce their  visit.  Their  stay  began  with  a  blunder;  and 
when  Sir  James  departed,  leaving  kind  feelings  behind  him, 
books,  his  hat,  his  gloves,  his  papers,  and  other  articles  of  ap- 
parel, were  found  also.  "  What  a  man  that  would  be,"  said 
Sydney  Smith,  "  had  he  one  particle  of  gall,  or  the  least  knowl- 
edge of  the  value  of  red  tape !"  It  was  true  that  the  indolent, 


462  HIS   EHEUMATIC   AKMOB. 

desultory  character  of  Mackintosh  interfered  perpetually  with 
his  progress  in  the  world.  He  loved  far  better  to  lie  on  the 
sofa  reading  a  novel  than  to  attend  a  Privy  Council ;  the  slight- 
est indisposition  was  made  on  his  part  a  plea  for  avoiding  the 
most  important  business. 

Sydney  Smith  had  said  that  when  "  a  clever  man  takes  to 
cultivating  turnips  and  retiring,  it  is  generally  an  imposture ;" 
but  in  him  the  retirement  was  no  imposture.  His  wisdom 
shone  forth  daily  in  small  and  great  matters.  "  Life,"  he  just- 
ly thought,  "  was  to  be  fortified  by  many  friendships,"  and  he 
acted  up  to  his  principles,  and  kept  up  friendships  by  letters. 
Cheerfulness  he  thought  might  be  cultivated  by  making  the 
rooms  one  lives  in  as  comfortable  as  possible.  His  own  draw- 
ing-room was  papered,  on  this  principle,  with  a  yellow  flower- 
ing pattern,  and  filled  with  "  irregular  regularities ;"  his  fires 
were  blown  into  brightness  by  Shadrachs,  as  he  called  them 
— tubes  furnished  with  air  opening  in  the  centre  of  each  fire. 
His  library  contained  his  rheumatic  armor ;  for  he  tried  heat 
and  compression  in  rheumatism ;  put  his  leg  into  narrow  buck- 
ets, which  he  called  his  jack-boots ;  wore  round  his  throat  a 
tin  collar ;  over  each  shoulder  he  had  a  large  tin  thing  like  a 
shoulder  of  mutton ;  and  on  his  head  he  displayed  a  hollow 
helmet  filled  with  hot  water.  In  the  middle  of  a  field  into 
which  his  windows  looked  was  a  skeleton  sort  of  a  machine, 
his  Universal  Scratcher,  with  which  every  animal,  from  a  lamb 
to  a  bullock,  could  scratch  itself.  Then  on  the  Sunday  the  Im- 
mortal was  called  into  use,  to  travel  in  state  to  a  church  like 
a  barn ;  about  fifty  people  in  it ;  but  the  most  original  idea 
was  farming  through  the  medium  of  a  tremendous  speaking- 
trumpet  from  his  own  door,  with  its  companion,  a  telescope, 
to  see  what  his  people  are  about !  On  the  24th  of  January, 
1828,  the  first  notable  piece  of  preferment  was  conferred  on 
him  by  Lord  Lyndhurst,  then  Chancellor,  and  of  widely  differ- 
ing political  opinions  to  Sydney  Smith.  This  was  a  vacant 
stall  in  the  cathedral  at  Bristol,  where,  on  the  ensuing  5th  of 
November,  the  new  canon  gave  the  Mayor  and  Corporation 
of  that  Protestant  city  such  a  dose  of  "  toleration  as  should 
last  them  many  a  year."  He  went  to  court  on  his  appoint- 
ment, and  appeared  in  shoestrings  instead  of  buckles.  "  I 
found,"  he  relates,  "  to  my  surprise,  people  looking  down  at 
my  feet :  I  could  not  think  what  they  were  at.  At  first  I 
thought  they  had  discovered  the  beauty  of  my  legs ;  but  at 
last  the  truth  burst  on  me,  by  some  wag  laughing  and  think- 
ing I  had  done  it  as  a  good  joke.  I  was,  of  course,  exceeding- 
ly annoyed  to  have  been  supposed  capable  of  such  a  vulgar, 
unmeaning  piece  of  disrespect,  and  kept  my  feet  as  coyly  un- 


NO    BISHOPRIC.  463 

der  my  petticoats  as  the  veriest  prude  in  the  country,  till  I 
should  make  my  escape."  His  circumstances  were  now  im- 
proved, and  though  moralists,  he  said,  thought  property  an 
evil,  he  declared  himself  happier  every  guinea  he  gained.  He 
thanked  God  for  his  animal  spirits,  which  received,  unhappi- 
ly, in  1829,  a  terrible  shock  from  the  death  of  his  eldest  son, 
Douglas,  aged  twenty-four.  This  was  the  great  misfortune 
of  his  life ;  the  young  man  was  promising,  talented,  affection- 
ate. He  exchanged  Foston  le  Clay  at  this  time  for  a  living  in 
Somersetshire,  of  a  beautiful  and  characteristic  name — Combe 
Florey. 

Combe  Florey  seems  to  have  been  an  earthly  paradise,  seat- 
ed in  one  of  those  delicious  hollows,  or  combes,  for  which  that 
part  of  the  west  of  England  is  celebrated.  His  withdraw- 
al from  the  Edinburgh  Review,  Mackintosh's  death,  the  mar- 
riage of  Ms  eldest  daughter,  Saba,  to  Dr.  Holland  (now  Sir 
Henry  Holland),  the  termination  of  Lord  Grey's  Administra- 
tion, which  ended  Sydney's  hopes  of  being  a  bishop,  were  the 
leading  events  in  his  life  for  the  next  few  years. 

It  appears  that  Sydney  Smith  felt  to  the  hour  of  his  death 
pained  that  those  by  whose  side  he  had  fought  for  fifty  years, 
in  their  adversity,  the  Whig  party,  should  never  have  offered 
what  he  declared  he  should  have  rejected,  a  bishopric,  when 
they  were  constantly  bestowing  such  promotions  on  persons 
of  mediocre  talent  and  claims.  Waiving  the  point  whether 
it  is  right  or  wrong  to  make  men  bishops  because  they  have 
been  political  partisans,  the  cause  of  this  alleged  injustice  may 
be  found  in  the  tone  of  the  times,  which  was  eminently  tinc- 
tured with  cant.  The  Clapham  sect  were  in  the  ascendency ; 
and  Ministers  scarcely  dared  to  offend  so  influential  a  body. 
Even  the  gentle  Sir  James  Mackintosh  refers,  in  his  Journal, 
with  disgust  to  the  phraseology  of  the  day: 

"  They  have  introduced  a'new  language,  in  which  they  nev- 
er say  that  A.  B.  is  good,  or  virtuous,  or  even  religious ;  but 
that  he  is  an  '  advanced  Christian.'  Dear  Mr.  Wilberforce  is 
an  *  advanced  Christian.'  Mrs.  C.  has  lost  three  children  with- 
out a  pang,  and  is  so  '  advanced  a  Christian'  that  she  could  see 
the  remaining  twenty,  '  with  poor  dear  Mr.  C.,'  removed  with 
perfect  tranquillity." 

Such  was  the  disgust  expressed  toward  that  school  by  Mack- 
intosh, whose  last  days  were  described  by  his  daughter  as  hav- 
ing been  passed  in  silence  and  thought,  with  his  Bible  before 
him,  breaking  that  silence — and  portentous  silence — to  speak 
of  God,  and  of  his  Maker's  disposition  toward  man.  His  mind 
ceased  to  be  occupied  with  speculations ;  politics  interested  him 
no  more.  His  own  "  personal  relationship  to  his  Creator"  was 


464  BECOMES   CANON    OF   ST.  PAUL'S. 

the  subject  of  his  thoughts.  Yet  Mackintosh  was  not  by  any 
means  considered  as  an  advanced  Christian,  or  even  as  a  Chris- 
tian at  all  by  the  zealots  of  his  time. 

Sydney  Smith's  notions  of  a  bishop  were  certainly  by  no 
means  carried  out  in  his  own  person  and  character.  "  I  nev- 
er remember  in  my  time,"  he  said,  "  a  real  bishop ;  a  grave, 
elderly  man,  full  of  Greek,  with  sound  views  of  the  middle 
voice  and  preterpluperfect  tense ;  gentle  and  kind  to  his  poor 
clergy,  of  powerful  and  commanding  eloquence  in  Parliament, 
never  to  be  put  down  when  the  great  interests  of  society  were 
concerned,  leaning  to  the  Government  when  it  was  right,  lean- 
ing to  the  people  when  they  were  right ;  feeling  that  if  the 
Spirit  of  God  had  called  him  to  that  high  office,  he  was  called 
for  no  mean  purpose,  but  rather  that  seeing  clearly,  acting  bold- 
ly, and  intending  purely,  he  might  confer  lasting  benefit  upon 
mankind." 

In  1831  Lord  Grey  appointed  Sydney  Smith  a  Canon  Resi- 
dentiary of  St.  Paul's ;  but  still  the  mitre  was  withheld,  al- 
though it  has  since  appeared  that  Lord  Grey  had  destined 
him  for  one  of  the  first  vacancies  in  England. 

Henceforth  his  residence  at  St.  Paul's  brought  him  still  more 
continually  into  the  world,  which  he  delighted  by  his  "  wise 
wit."  Most  London  dinners,  he  declared,  evaporated  in  whis- 
pers to  one's  next  neighbors.  He  never,  however,  spoke  to  his 
neighbor,  but  "fired"  across  the  table.  One  day,  however,  he 
broke  this  rule,  on  hearing  a  lady,  who  sat  next  him,  say  in  a 
sweet,  low  voice,  "  No  gravy,  sir."  "  Madam,"  he  cried,  "  I 
have  all  my  life  been  looking  for  a  person  who  disliked  gra- 
vy ;  let  us  swear  immortal  friendship."  She  looked  astonished, 
but  took  the  oath,  and  kept  it.  "  What  better  foundation  for 
friendship,"  he  asks,  "  than  similarity  of  tastes  ?" 

He  gave  an  evening  party  once  a  week,  when  a  profusion 
of  wax-lights  was  his  passion.  He  loved  to  see  young  people 
decked  with  natural  flowers ;  he  was,  in  fact,  a  blameless  and 
benevolent  Epicurean  in  every  thing;  great  indeed  was  the 
change  from  his  former  residence  at  Foston,  which  he  used  to 
say  was  twelve  miles  from  a  lemon.  Charming  as  his  parties 
at  home  must  have  been,  they  wanted  the  bonhommie  and 
simplicity  of  former  days,  and  of  the  homely  suppers  in  Or- 
chard Street.  Lord  Dudley,  Rogers,  Moore,  "  Young  Macau- 
lay,"  as  he  was  called  for  many  years,  formed  now  his  society. 
Lord  Dudley  was  then  in  the  state  which  afterward  became  in- 
sanity, and  darkened  completely  a  mind  sad  and  peculiar  from 
childhood.  Bankes,  in  his  "  Journal,"  relates  an  anecdote  of 
him  about  this  time,  when,  as  he  says,  "  Dudley's  mind  was  on 
the  wane ;  but  still  his  caustic  humor  would  find  vent  through 


A    SHARP    REPROOF.  465 

the  cloud  that  was  gradually  overshadowing  his  masterly  in- 
tellect." He  was  one  day  sitting  in  his  room  soliloquizing 
aloud ;  his  favorite  Newfoundland  dog  was  at  his  side,  and 
seemed  to  engross  all  his  attention.  A  gentleman  was  pres- 
ent who  was  good-looking  and  good-natured,  but  not  over- 
burdened with  sense.  Lord  Dudley  at  last,  patting  his  dog's 
head,  said,  "  Fido  mio,  they  say  dogs  have  no  souls.  Humph, 

and  still  they  say "  (naming  the  gentleman  present)  "has 

a  soul !"  One  day  Lord  Dudley  met  Mr.  Allen,  Lord  Hol- 
land's librarian,  and  asked  him  to  dine  with  him.  Allen  went. 
When  asked  to  describe  his  dinner,  he  said,  "There  was  no 
one  there.  Lord  Dudley  talked  a  little  to  his  servant,  and  a 
great  deal  to  his  dog,  but  said  not  one  word  to  me." 

Innumerable  are  the  witticisms  related  of  Sydney  Smith, 
when  seated  at  a  dinner-table,  having  swallowed  in  life  what 
he  called  a  "  Caspian  Sea"  of  soup.  Talking  one  day  of  Sir 
Charles  LyelPs  book,  the  subject  of  which  was  the  phenomena 
which  the  earth  might,  at  some  future  period,  present  to  the 
geologists — "  Let  us  imagine,"  he  said,  "  an  excavation  on  the 
site  of  St.  Paul's ;  fancy  a  lecture  by  the  Owen  of  his  future  era 
on  the  thigh-bone  of  a  minor  canon,  or  the  tooth  of  a  dean  : 
the  form,  qualities,  and  tastes  he  would  discover  from  them." 
"  It  is  a  great  proof  of  shyness,"  he  said,  "  to  crumble  your 
bread  at  dinner.  Ah !  I  see,"  he  said,  turning  to  a  young  lady, 
"  you're  afraid  of  me ;  you  crumble  your  bread.  I  do  it  when 
I  sit  by  the  Bishop  of  London,  and  with  both  hands  when  I  sit 
by  the  Archbishop." 

He  gave  a  capital  reproof  to  a  lively  young  M.  P.  who  was 
accompanying  him  after  dinner  to  one  of  the  solemn  evening 
receptions  at  Lambeth  Palace  during  the  life  of  the  late 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  The  M.  P.  had  been  calling  him 
"  Smith,"  though  they  had  never  met  before  that  day.  As 
the  carriage  stopped  at  the  Palace,  Smith  turned  to  him  and 
said,  "  Now  don't,  my  good  fellow,  don't  call  the  Archbishop 
'Howley.'" 

Talking  of  fancy  balls — "Of  course,"  he  said,  "if  I  went  to 
one,  I  should  go  as  a  Dissenter."  Of  Macaulay  he  said,  "  To 
take  him  out  of  literature  and  science,  and  to  put  him  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  is  like  taking  the  chief  physician  out  of 
London  in  a  pestilence." 

Nothing  amused  him  so  much  as  the  want  of  perception  of 
a  joke.  One  hot  day  a  Mrs.  Jackson  called  on  him,  and  spoke 
of  the  oppressive  state  of  the  weather.  "  Heat !  it  was  dread- 
ful," said  Sydney  ;  "  I  found  I  could  do  nothing  for  it  but  take 
off  my  flesh  and  sit  in  my  bones."  "  Take  off  your  flesh  and 
sit  in  your  bones !  Oh,  Mr.  Smith,  how  could  you  do  that  ?" 

TT2 


466 

the  lady  cried.  "  Come  and  see  next  time,  ma'am — nothing 
more  easy."  She  went  away,  however,  convinced  that  such  a 
proceeding  was  very  unorthodox.  No  wonder,  with  all  his 
various  acquirements,  it  should  be  said  of  him  that  no  "  dull 
dinners  were  ever  remembered  in  his  company." 

A  happy  old  age  concluded  his  life,  at  once  brilliant  and  use- 
ful. To  the  last  he  never  considered  his  education  as  finished. 
His  wit,  a  friend  said,  "  was  always  fresh,  always  had  the  dew 
on  it."  He  latterly  got  into  what  Lord  Jeffrey  called  the  vi- 
cious habit  of  water-drinking.  Wine,  he  said,  destroyed  his 
understanding.  He  even  "  forgot  the  number  of  the  Muses, 
and  thought  it  was  thirty-nine  of  course."  He  agreed  with 
Sir  James  Mackintosh  that  he  had  found  the  world  more  good 
and  more  foolish  than  he  had  thought  when  young.  He  took 
a  cheerful  view  of  all  things  ;  he  thanked  God  for  small  as  well 
as  great  things,  even  for  tea.  "  I  am  glad,"  he  used  to  say, 
"  I  was  not  born  before  tea."  His  domestic  affections  were 
strong,  and  were  heartily  reciprocated. 

General  society  he  divided  into  classes:  "The  noodles — 
very  numerous  and  well  known.  The  affliction  woman — a 
valuable  member  of  society,  generally  an  ancient  spinster  in 
small  circumstances,  who  packs  up  her  bag  and  sets  off  in 
cases  of  illness  or  death, '  to  comfort,  flatter,  fetch,  and  carry.' 
The  up-takers — people  who  see  from  their  fingers'  ends,  and 
go  through  a  room  touching  every  thing.  The  clearers — who 
begin  at  a  dish  and  go  on  tasting  and  eating  till  it  is  finished. 
The  sheep-walkers — who  go  on  forever  on  the  beaten  track. 
The  lemon-squeezers  of  society — who  act  on  you  as  a  wet 
blanket ;  see  a  cloud  in  sunshine ;  the  nails  of  the  coffin  in  the 
ribbons  of  a  bride ;  extinguish  all  hope ;  people  whose  very 
look  sets  your  teeth  on  an  edge.  The  let-well-aloners,  cousin- 
german  to  the  noodles — yet  a  variety,  and  who  are  afraid  to 
act,  and  think  it  safer  to  stand  still.  Then  the  washerwomen 
— very  numerous !  who  always  say,  "  Well,  if  ever  I  put  on 
my  best  bonnet,  'tis  sure  to  rain,'  etc. 

"  Besides  this,  there  is  a  very  large  class  of  people  always 
treading  on  your  gouty  foot,  or  talking  in  your  deaf  ear,  or 
asking  you  to  give  them  something  with  your  lame  hand,"  etc. 

During  the  autumn  of  the  year  1844,  Sydney  Smith  felt  the 
death-stroke  approaching.  "  I  am  so  weak,  both  in  body  and 
mind,"  he  said,  "  that  I  believe,  if  the  knife  were  put  into  my 
hand,  I  should  not  have  strength  enough  to  stick  it  into  a  Dis- 
senter." In  October  he  became  seriously  ill.  "Ah!  Charles," 
he  said  to  General  Fox  (when  he  was  being  kept  very  low), 
"  I  wish  they  would  allow  me  even  the  wing  of  a  roasted  but- 
terfly." He  dreaded  sorrowful  faces  around  him,  but  confided 


HIS    DEATH.  46V 

to  his  old  servant,  Annie  Kay — and  to  her  alone — his  sense  of 
his  danger. 

Almost  the  last  person  Sydney  Smith  saw  was  his  beloved 
brother  Bobus,  who  followed  him  to  the  grave  a  fortnight  after 
he  had  been  laid  in  the  tomb. 

He  lingered  till  the  22d  of  February,  1845.  His  son  closed 
his  eyes.  His  last  act  was  bestowing  on  a  poverty-stricken 
clergyman  a  living. 

He  was  buried  at  Kensal  Green,  where  his  eldest  son,  Doug- 
las, had  been  interred. 

It  has  been  justly  and  beautifully  said  of  Sydney  Smith,  that 
Christianity  was  not  a  dogma  with  him,  but  a  practical  and 
most  beneficent  rule  of  life. 

As  a  clergyman,  he  was  liberal,  practical,  stanch ;  free  from 
the  latitudinarian  principles  of  Hoadley,  as  from  the  bigotry 
of  Laud.  His  wit  was  the  wit  of  a  virtuous,  a  decorous  man  ; 
it  had  pungency  without  venom;  humor  without  indelicacy; 
and  was  copious  without  being  tiresome. 


GEORGE  BUBB  DODINGTOtf,  LORD  MELCOMBE, 

"  IT  would  have  been  well  for  Lord  Melcombe's  memory," 
Horace  Walpole  remarks,  "if  his  fame  had  been  suffered  to 
rest  on  the  tradition  of  his  wit  and  the  evidence  of  his  poetry." 
And,  in  the  present  day,  that  desirable  result  has  come  to  pass. 
We  remember  Bubb  Dodington  chiefly  as  the  courtier  whose 
person,  houses,  and  furniture  were  replete  with  costly  ostenta- 
tion, so  as  to  provoke  the  satire  of  Foote,  who  brought  him 
on  the  stage  under  the  name  of  Sir  Thomas  Lofty  in  "  The 
Patron." 

We  recall  him  most  as  "  V Amphytricn  chez  gui  on  dine :" 
"  My  Lord  of  Melcombe,"  as  Mallett  says, 

"Whose  soups  and  sauces  duly  season'd, 
Whose  wit  well  timed  and  sense  well  reason'd, 
Give  Burgundy  a  brighter  stain, 
And  add  new  flavor  to  Champagne." 

Who  now  cares  much  for  the  court  intrigues  which  severed 
Sir  Robert  Walpole  and  Bubb  Dodington  ?  Who  now  reads 
without  disgust  the  annals  of  that  famous  quarrel  between 
George  II.  and  his  son,  during  which  each  party  devoutly 
wished  the  other  dead?  Who  minds  whether  the  time-serv- 
ing Bubb  Dodington  went  over  to  Lord  Bute  or  not  ?  Who 
cares  whether  his  hopes  of  political  preferment  were  or  were 
not  gratified  ?  Bubb  Dodington  was,  in  fact,  the  dinner-giv- 
ing lordly  poet,  to  whom  even  the  saintly  Young  could  write, 

"You  give  protection — I  a  worthless  strain." 

Born  in  1691,  the  accomplished  courtier  answered,  till  he 
had  attained  the  age  of  twenty-nine,  to  the  not  very  euphoni- 
ous name  of  Bubb.  Then  a  benevolent  uncle  with  a  large  es- 
tate died,  and  left  him,  with  his  lands,  the  more  exalted  sur- 
name of  Dodington.  He  sprang,  however,  from  an  obscure 
family,  who  had  settled  in  Dorchester ;  but  that  disadvantage, 
which,  according  to  Lord  Brougham's  famous  pamphlet,  acts 
so  fatally  on  a  young  man's  advancement  in  English  public  life, 
was  obviated,  as  most  things  are,  by  a  great  fortune. 

Mr.  Bubb  had  been  educated  at  Oxford.  At  the  age  of 
twenty-four  he  was  elected  M.  P.  for  Winchelsea ;  he  was  soon 
afterward  named  Envoy  at  the  Court  of  Spain,  but  returned 
home  after  his  accession  of  wealth  to  provincial  honors,  and 


470  A   MISFORTUNE   FOR   A   MAN   OF   SOCIETY. 

became  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Somerset.  Nay,  poets  began  to 
worship  him,  and  even  to  pronounce  him  to  be  well  born : 

"Descended  from  old  British  sires; 
Great  Dodington  to  kings  allied ; 
My  patron  then,  my  laurels'  pride." 

It  would  be  consolatory  to  find  that  it  is  only  Welsted  who 
thus  profaned  the  Muse  by  this  abject  flattery,  were  it  not  re- 
corded that  Thomson  dedicated  to  him  his  "  Summer."  The 
dedication  was  prompted  by  Lord  Binning ;  and  "  Summer" 
was  published  in  1727,  when  Dodington  was  one  of  the  Lords 
of  the  Treasury,  as  well  as  Clerk  of  the  Pells  hi  Ireland.  It 
seemed,  therefore,  worth  while  for  Thomson  to  pen  such  a  pas- 
sage as  this :  "  Your  example,  sir,  has  recommended  poetry 
with  the  greatest  grace  to  the  example  of  those  who  are  en- 
gaged in  the  most  active  scenes  of  life ;  and  this,  though  con- 
fessedly the  least  considerable  of  those  qualities  that  dignify 
your  character,  must  be  particularly  pleasing  to  one  whose  only 
hope  of  being  introduced  to  your  regard  is  thro'  the  recom- 
mendation of  an  art  in  which  you  are  a  master."  Warton 
adding  this  tribute : 

"To  praise  a  Dodington,  rash  bard,  forbear! 
What  can  thy  weak  and  ill-tuned  voice  avail, 
When  on  that  theme  both  Young  and  Thomson  fail  ?" 

Yet  even  when  midway  in  his  career,  Dodington,  in  the  famous 
political  caricature  called  the  "Motion,"  is  depicted  as  "the 
Spaniel,"  sitting  between  the  Duke  of  Argyle's  legs,  while  his 
grace  is  driving  a  coach  at  full  speed  to  the  Treasury,  with  a 
sword  instead  of  a  whip  in  his  hand,  with  Lord  Chesterfield  as 
postillion,  and  Lord  Cobham  as  a  footman,  holding  on  by  the 
straps ;  even  then  the  servile  though  pompous  character  of  this 
true  man  of  the  world  was  comprehended  completely ;  and 
Bubb  Dodington's  characteristics  never  changed. 

In  his  political  life,  Dodington  was  so  selfish,  obsequious,  and 
versatile  as  to  incur  universal  opprobrium ;  he  had  also  another 
misfortune  for  a  man  of  society — he  became  fat  and  lethargic. 
"My  brother  Ned,"  Horace  Walpole  remarks,  "says  he  is 
grown  of  less  consequence,  though  more  weight."  And  on 
another  occasion,  speaking  of  a  majority  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
he  adds,  "  I  do  not  count  Dodington,  who  must  now  always  be 
in  the  minority,  for  no  majority  will  accept  him." 

While,  however,  during  the  factious  reign  of  George  II.,  the 
town  was  declared,  even  by  Horace,  to  be  "  wondrous  dull ; 
operas  unfrequented,  plays  not  in  fashion,  and  amours  old  as 
marriages,"  Bubb  Dodington,  with  his  wealth  and  profusion, 
contrived  always  to  be  in  vogue  as  a  host,  while  he  was  at  a 
discount  as  a  politician.  Politics  and  literature  are  the  high- 


BEANDENBURGH    HOUSE.  471 

roads  in  England  to  that  much-craved-for  distinction,  an  admit- 
tance into  the  great  world ;  and  Dodington  united  these  pass- 
ports in  his  own  person :  he  was  a  poetaster,  and  wrote  polit- 
ical pamphlets.  The  latter  were  published  and  admired ;  the 
poems  were  referred  to  as  "  very  pretty  love  verses"  by  Lord 
Lyttelton,  and  were  never  published — and  never  ought  to  have 
been  published,  it  is  stated. 

His  bon  mots,  his  sallies,  his  fortune  and  places,  and  contin- 
ual dangling  at  court,  procured  Bubo,  as  Pope  styled  him,  one 
pre-eminence.  His  dinners  at  Hammersmith  were  the  most 
recherche  in  the  metropolis.  Every  one  remembers,  or  ought 
to  remember,  Brandenburgh  House,  when  the  hapless  Caroline 
of  Brunswick  held  her  court  there,  and  where  her  brave  heart 
— burdened  probably  with  many  sins — broke  at  last.  It  had 
been  the  residence  of  the  beautiful  and  famous  Margravine  of 
Anspach,  whose  loveliness  in  vain  tempts  us  to  believe  her  in- 
nocent, in  despite  of  facts.  Before  those  eras — the  presence 
of  the  Margravine,  whose  infidelities  were  almost  avowed,  and 
the  abiding  of  the  queen,  whose  errors  had,  at  all  events, 
verged  on  the  very  confines  of  guilt — the  house  was  owned  by 
Dodington.  There  he  gave  dinners ;  there  he  gratified  a  pas- 
sion for  display  which  was  puerile ;  there  he  indulged  in  eccen- 
tricities which  almost  implied  insanity ;  there  he  concocted  his 
schemes  for  court  advancement ;  and  there,  later  in  life,  he  con- 
tributed some  of  the  treasures  of  his  wit  to  dramatic  literature. 
"  The  Wishes,"  a  comedy,  by  Bentley,  was  supposed  to  owe 
much  of  its  point  to  the  brilliant  wit  of  Dodington.* 

4t  Brandenburgh  House,  a  nobler  presence  than  that  of  Dod- 
ington still  haunted  the  groves  and  alleys,  for  Prince  Rupert 
had  once  owned  it.  When  Dodington  bought  it,  he  gave  it — 
in  jest,  we  must  presume — the  name  of  La  Trappe;  and  it  was 
not  called  Brandenburgh  House  until  the  fair  and  frail  Mar- 
gravine came  to  live  there. 

Its  gardens  were  long  famous,  and  .in  the  time  of  Doding- 
ton were  the  scene  of  revel.  Thomas  Bentley,  the  son  of  Rich- 
ard Bentley,  the  celebrated  critic,  had  written  a  play  called 
"The  Wishes,"  and  during  the  summer  of  1761  it  was  acted 
at  Drury  Lane,  and  met  with  the  especial  approbation  of 
George  III.,  who  sent  the  author,  through  Lord  Bute,  a  pres- 
ent of  two  hundred  guineas  as  a  tribute  to  the  good  sentiments 
of  the  production. 

This  piece,  which,  in  spite  of  its  moral  tendency,  has  died 
out,  while  plays  of  less  virtuous  character  have  lived,  was  re- 
hearsed in  the  gardens  of  Brandenburgh  House.  Bubb  Dod- 
ington associated  much  with  those  who  give  fame ;  but  he 
*  See  Walpole's  "Royal  and  Noble  Authors." 


472 

courted  among  them  also  those  who  could  revenge  affronts  by 
bitter  ridicule.  Among  the  actors  and  literati  who  were  then 
sometimes  at  Brandenburgh  House  were  Foote  and  Churchill ; 
capital  boon  companions,  but,  as  it  proved,  dangerous  foes. 

Endowed  with  imagination ;  with  a  mind  enriched  by  clas- 
sical and  historical  studies ;  possessed  of  a  brilliant  wit,  Bubb 
Dodington  was,  nevertheless,  in  the  sight  of  some  men,  ridicu- 
lous. While  the  rehearsals  of  "  The  Wishes"  went  on,  Foote 
was  noting  down  all  the  peculiarities  of  the  Lord  of  Branden- 
burgh House,  with  a  view  to  bring  them  to  account  in  his  play 
of  "  The  Patron."  Lord  Melcombe  was  an  aristocratic  Dom- 
bey  :  stultified  by  his  own  self-complacency,  he  dared  to  exhib- 
it his  peculiarities  before  the  English  Aristophanes.  It  was  an 
act  of  imprudence,  for  Foote  had  long  before  (in  1747)  opened 
the  little  theatre  of  the  Haymarket  with  a  sort  of  monologue 
play,  "  The  Diversions  of  the  Morning,"  in  which  he  convulsed 
his  audience  with  the  perfection  of  a  mimicry  never  beheld  be- 
fore, and  so  wonderful,  that  even  the  persons  of  his  models 
seemed  to  stand  before  the  amazed  spectators. 

These  entertainments,  in  which  the  contriver  was  at  once 
the  author  and  performer,  have  been  admirably  revived  by 
Mathews  and  others,  and  in  another  line  by  the  lamented  Al- 
bert Smith.  The  Westminster  justices,  furious  and  alarmed, 
opposed  the  daring  performance,  on  which  Foote  changed  the 
name  of  his  piece,  and  called  it  "  Mr.  Foote  giving  Tea  to  his 
Friends,"  himself  still  the  sole  actor,  and  changing  with  Pro- 
teus-like celerity  from  one  to  the  other.  Then  came  his 
"Auction  of  Pictures,"  and  Sir  Thomas  de  Veil,  one  of  his  ene- 
mies, the  justices,  was  introduced.  Orator  Henley  and  Cock 
the  auctioneer  figured  also  ;  and  year  after  year  the  town  was 
enchanted  by  that  which  is  most  gratifying  to  a  polite  audience, 
the  finished  exhibition  of  faults  and  follies.  One  stern  voice 
was  raised  in  reprobation,  that  of  Samuel  Johnson ;  he,  at  all 
events,  had  a  due  horror  of  buffoons ;  but  even  he  owned  him- 
self vanquished. 

"  The  first  time  I  was  in  Foote's  company  was  at  Fitzher- 
bert's.  Having  no  good  opinion  of  the  fellow,  I  was  resolved 
not  to  be  pleased ;  and  it  is  very  difficult  to  please  a  man  against 
his  will.  I  went  on  eating  my  dinner  pretty  sullenly,  affecting 
not  to  mind  him ;  but  the  dog  was  so  very  comical  that  I  was 
obliged  to  lay  down  my  knife  and  fork,  throw  myself  back  in 
my  chair,  and  fairly  laugh  it  out.  Sir,  he  was  irresistible." 
Consoled  by  Foote's  misfortunes  and  ultimate  complicated 
misery  for  his  lessened  importance,  Bubb  Dodington  still 
reigned,  however,  in  the  hearts  of  some  learned  votaries. 
Richard  Bentley,  the  critic,  compared  him  to  Lord  Halifax — 


473 

"That  Halifax,  my  lord,  as  you  do  yet, 
Stood  forth  the  friend  of  poetry  and  wit, 
Sought  silent  merit  in  the  secret  cell, 
And  Heav'n,  nay,  even  man,  repaid  him  well." 

A  more  remorseless  foe,  however,  than  Foote,  appeared  in 
the  person  of  Charles  Churchill,  the  wild  and  unclerical  son  of 
a  poor  curate  of  Westminster.  Foote  laughed  Bubb  Doding- 
ton  down,  but  Churchill  perpetuated  the  satire ;  for  Churchill 
was  wholly  unscrupulous,  and  his  faults  had  been  reckless  and 
desperate.  Wholly  unfit  for  a  clergyman,  he  had  taken  orders, 
obtained  a  curacy  in  Wales  at  £30  a  year ;  not  being  able  to 
subsist,  took  to  keeping  a  cider-cellar,  became  a  sort  of  bank- 
rupt, and,  quitting  Wales,  succeeded  to  the  curacy  of  his  fa- 
ther, who  had  just  died.  Still,  famine  haunted  his  home ; 
Churchill  took,  therefore,  to  teaching  young  ladies  to  read  and 
write,  and  conducted  himself  in  the  boarding-school,  where  his 
duties  lay,  with  wonderful  propriety.  He  had  married  at  seven- 
teen ;  but  even  that  step  had  not  protected  his  morals :  he  fell 
into  abject  poverty.  Lloyd,  father  of  his  friend  Robert  Lloyd, 
then  second  master  at  Westminster,  made  an  arrangement  with 
his  creditors.  Young  Lloyd  had  published  a  poem  called 
"The  Actor;"  Churchill,  in  imitation,  now  produced  "The 
Rosciad,"  and  Bubb  Dodington  was  one  whose  ridiculous 
points  were  salient  in  those  days  of  personality.  "The  Ros- 
ciad" had  a  signal  success,  which  completed  the  ruin  of  its  au- 
thor :  he  became  a  man  of  the  town,  forsook  the  wife  of  his 
youth,  and  abandoned  the  clerical  character.  There  are  few 
sights  more  contemptible  than  that  of  a  clergyman  who  has 
cast  off  his  profession,  or  whose  profession  has  cast  him  off. 
But  Churchill's  talents  for  a  time  kept  him  from  utter  destitu- 
tion. Bubb  Dodington  may  have  been  consoled  by  finding 
that  he  shared  the  fate  of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  had  spoken  slight- 
ingly of  Churchill's  works,  and  who  shone  forth,  therefore,  in 
"  The  Ghost,"  a  later  poem,  as  Dr.  Pomposo. 

Richard  Cumberland,  the  dramatist,  drew  a  portrait  of  Lord 
Melcombe,  which  is  said  to  have  been  taken  from  the  life  ;  but 
perhaps  the  most  faithful  delineation  of  Bubb  Dodington's 
character  was  furnished  by  himself  in  his  "Diary;"  in  which, 
as  it  has  been  well  observed,  he  "  unveiled  the  nakedness  of 
his  mind,  and  displayed  himself  as  a  courtly  compound  of  mean 
compliance  and  political  prostitution."  It  may,  in  passing,  be 
remarked,  that  few  men  figure  well  in  an  autobiography ;  and 
that  Cumberland  himself,  proclaimed  by  Dr.  Johnson  to  be  a 
"  learned,  ingenious,  accomplished  gentleman,"  adding,  the 
"  want  of  company  is  an  inconvenience,  but  Mr.  Cumberland  is 
a  million" — in  spite  of  this  eulogium,  Cumberland  has  betrayed 


4*74  PERSONAL  EIDICULE   IN   ITS   PROPER  LIGHT. 

in  his  own  autobiography  unbounded  vanity,  worldliness,  and 
an  undue  estimation  of  his  own  perishable  fame.  After  all, 
amusing  as  personalities  must  always  be,  neither  the  humors 
of  Foote,  the  vigorous  satire  of  Churchill,  nor  the  careful  limn- 
ing of  Cumberland,  while  they  can  not  be  ranked  among  tal- 
ents of  the  highest  order,  imply  a  sort  of  social  treachery.  The 
delicious  little  colloquy  between  Boswell  and  Johnson  places 
low  personal  ridicule  in  its  proper  light. 

Boswell. — "  Foote  has  a  great  deal  of  humor."  Johnson. 
— "  Yes,  sir."  Boswell. — "  He  has  a  singular  talent  of  exhibit- 
ing characters."  Johnson. — "  Sir,  it  is  not  a  talent — it  is  a 
vice ;  it  is  what  others  abstain  from.  It  is  not  comedy,  which 
exhibits  the  character  of  a  species — as  that  of  a  miser  gather- 
ed from  many  misers — it  is  farce  which  exhibits  individuals." 
Boswell. — "  Did  he  not  think  of  exhibiting  you,  sir  ?"  John- 
son.— "  Sir,  fear  restrained  him ;  he  knew  I  would  have  broken 
his  bones.  I  would  have  saved  him  the  trouble  of  cutting  off 
a  leg ;  I  would  not  have  left  him  a  leg  to  cut  off." 

Few  annals  exist  of  the  private  life  of  Bubb  Dodington,  but 
those  few  are  discreditable. 

Like  most  men  of  his  time,  and  like  many  men  of  all  times, 
Dodington  was  entangled  by  an  unhappy  and  perplexing  in- 
trigue. 

There  was  a  certain  "black  woman,"  as  Horace  Walpole 
calls  a  Mrs.  Strawbridge,  whom  Bubb  Dodington  admired. 
This  handsome  brunette  lived  in  a  corner  house  of  Saville 
Row,  in  Piccadilly,  where  Dodington  visited  her.  The  result 
of  their  intimacy  was  his  giving  this  lady  a  bond  of  ten  thou- 
sand pounds  to  be  paid  if  he  married  any  one  else.  The  real 
object  of  his  affections  was  a  Mrs.  Behan,  with  whom  he  lived 
seventeen  years,  and  whom,  on  the  death  of  Mrs.  Strawbridge, 
he  eventually  married. 

Among  Bubb  Dodington's  admirers  and  disciples  was  Paul 
Whitehead,  a  wild  specimen  of  the  poet,  rake,  satirist,  drama- 
tist, all  in  one ;  and,  what  was  quite  in  character,  a  Templar  to 
boot.  Paul — so  named  from  being  born  on  that  saint's  day — 
wrote  one  or  two  pieces  which  brought  him  an  ephemeral 
fame,  such  as  the  "  State  Dunces,"  and  the  "  Epistle  to  Dr. 
Thompson,"  "Manners,"  a  satire,  and  the  "Gymnasiad,"  a 
mock  heroic  poem,  intended  to  ridicule  the  passion  for  boxing 
then  prevalent.  Paul  Whitehead,  who  died  in  1774,  was  an 
infamous,  but  not,  in  the  opinion  of  Walpole,  a  despicable  poet, 
yet  Churchill  has  consigned  him  to  everlasting  infamy  as  a 
reprobate  in  these  lines  : 

"May  I  (can  worse  disgrace  on  manhood  fall?) 
Be  born  a  Whitehead,  and  baptized  a  Paul." 


DIARY."  475 

Paul  was  not,  however,  worse  than  his  satirist  Churchill ; 
and  both  of  these  wretched  men  were  members  of  a  society 
long  the  theme  of  horror  and  disgust,  even  after  its  existence 
had  ceased  to  be  remembered,  except  by  a  few  old  people. 
This  was  the  "  Hell-fire  Club,"  held  in  appropriate  orgies  at 
Medmeuham  Abbey,  Buckinghamshire.  The  profligate  Sir 
Francis  Dashwood,  Wilkes,  and  Churchill  were  among  its 
most  prominent  members. 

With  such  associates,  and  living  in  a  court  where  nothing 
but  the  basest  passions  reigned  and  the  lowest  arts  prevailed, 
we  are  inclined  to  accord  with  the  descendant  of  Bubb  Dod- 
ington,  the  editor  of  his  "  Diary,"  Henry  Penruddocke  Wynd- 
ham,  who  declares  that  all  Lord  Melcombe's  political  conduct 
was  "  wholly  directed  by  the  base  motives  of  vanity,  selfish- 
ness, and  avarice."  Lord  Melcombe  seems  to  have  been  a 
man  of  the  world  of  the  very  worst  calibre;  sensual,  servile, 
and  treacherous;  ready,  during  the  lifetime  of  his  patron, 
Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  to  go  any  lengths  against  the  ad- 
verse party  of  the  Pelhams,  that  prince's  political  foes — eager, 
after  the  death  of  Frederick,  to  court  those  powerful  men  with 
fawning  servility. 

The  famous  "  Diary"  of  Bubb  Dodington  supplies  the  infor- 
mation from  which  these  conclusions  have  been  drawn.  Hor- 
ace Walpole,  who  knew  Dodington  well,  describes  how  he  read 
with  avidity  the  "Diary"  which  was  published  in  1784. 

"  A  nephew  of  Lord  Melcombe's  heirs  has  published  that 
lord's  'Diary.'  Indeed,  it  commences  in  1749,  and  I  grieve 
it  was  not  dated  twenty  years  later.  However,  it  deals  in  top- 
ics that  are  twenty  times  more  familiar  and  fresh  to  my  mem- 
ory than  any  passage  that  has  happened  within  these  six 
months.  I  wish  I  could  convey  it  to  you.  Though  drawn  by 
his  own  hand,  and  certainly  meant  to  flatter  himself,  it  is  a 
truer  portrait  than  any  of  his  hirelings  would  have  given. 
Never  was  such  a  composition  of  vanity,  versatility,  and  ser- 
vility. In  short,  there  is  but  one  feature  wanting  in  it,  his 
wit,  of  which  in  the  whole  book  there  are  not  three  sallies." 

The  editor  of  this  "  Diary"  remarks  "  that  he  will  no  doubt 
be  considered  a  very  extraordinary  editor,  the  practice  of  whom 
has  generally  been  to  prefer  flattery  to  truth,  and  partiality  to 
justice."  To  understand,  not  the  flattery  which  his  contem- 
poraries heaped  upon  Bubb  Dodington,  but  the  opprobrium 
with  which  they  loaded  his  memory — to  comprehend,  not  his 
merits,  but  his  demerits — it  is  necessary  to  take  a  brief  survey 
of  his  political  life  from  the  commencement.  He  began  life, 
as  we  have  seen,  as  a  servile  adherent  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole. 
A  political  epistle  to  the  minister  was  the  prelude  to  a  tempo- 


476  THE   BEST   COMMENTARY    ON   A    MAN'S   LIFE. 

rary  alliance  only,  for  in  1737  Bubb  went  over  to  the  adverse 
party  of  Leicester  House,  and  espoused  the  cause  of  Frederick, 
Prince  of  Wales,  against  his  royal  father.  He  was  therefore 
dismissed  from  the  Treasury.  When  Sir  Robert  fell,  Bubb  ex- 
pected to  rise,  but  his  expectations  of  preferment  were  not  real- 
ized. He  attacked  the  new  administration  forthwith,  and  suc- 
ceeded so  far  in  becoming  important  that  he  was  made  Treas- 
urer of  the  Navy,  a  post  which  he  resigned  in  1749,  and  which 
he  held  again  in  1755,  but  which  he  lost  the  next  year.  On 
the  accession  of  George  III.,  he  was  not  ashamed  to  appear  al- 
together in  a  ilew  character,  as  the  friend  of  Lord  Bute :  he 
was,  therefore,  advanced  to  the  peerage  by  the  title  of  Baron 
of  Melcombe  Regis,  in  1761.  The  honor  was  enjoyed  for  one 
short  year  only,  and  on  the  28th  of  July,  1762,  Bubb  Doding- 
ton  expired.  Horace  Walpole,  in  his  Royal  and  Noble  Au- 
thors, complains  that  "  Dodington's  4  Diary'  was  mangled,  in 
compliment,  before  it  was  imparted  to  the  public."  We  can 
not,  therefore,  judge  of  what  the  "  Diary"  was  before,  as  the 
editor  avows  every  anecdote  was  cut  out,  and  all  the  little  gos- 
sip so  illustrative  of  character  and  manners  which  would  have 
brightened  its  dull  pages,  fell  beneath  the  power  of  a  merciless 
pair  of  scissors.  Mr.  Penruddocke  Wyndham  conceives,  how- 
ever, that  he  was  only  doing  justice  to  society  in  these  sup- 
pressions. "It  would,"  he  says,  "be  no  entertainment  to  the 
reader  to  be  informed  who  daily  dined  with  his  lordship,  or 
whom  he  daily  met  at  the  table  of  other  people." 

Posterity  thinks  differently :  a  knowledge  of  a  man's  asso- 
ciates forms  the  best  commentary  on  his  life ;  and  there  is 
much  reason  to  rejoice  that  all  biographers  are  not  like  Mr. 
Penruddocke  Wyndham.  Bubb  Dodington,  more  especially, 
was  a  man  of  society :  inferior  as  a  literary  man,  contemptible 
as  a  politician,  it  was  only  at  the  head  of  his  table  that  he  was 
agreeable  and  brilliant.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  man  who  had  no 
domestic  life :  a  courtier,  like  Lovd  Hervey,  but  without  Lord 
Hervey's  consistency.  He  was,  in  truth,  a  type  of  that  era  in 
England :  vulgar  in  aims ;  dissolute  in  conduct ;  ostentatious, 
vain-glorious — of  a  low,  ephemeral  ambition,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  talented,  acute,  and  lavish  to  the  lettered.  The  public  is 
now  the  patron  of  the  gifted.  What  writer  cares  for  individ- 
ual opinion,  except  as  it  tends  to  sweep  up  the  gross  amount 
of  public  blame  or  censure  ?  What  publisher  will  consent  to 
undertake  a  work  because  some  lord  or  lady  recommended  it 
to  his  notice  ?  The  reviewer  is  greater  in  the  commonwealth 
of  letters  than  the  man  of  rank. 

But  in  these  days  it  was  otherwise ;  and  they  who,  in  the 
necessities  of  the  times,  did  what  they  could  to  advance  the  in- 
terests of  the  belles  lettres,  deserve  not  to  be  forgotten. 


LEICESTER   HOUSE.  477 

It  is  with  a  feeling  of  sickness  that  we  open  the  pages  of 
this  great  wit's  "  Diary,"  and  attempt  to  peruse  the  sentences 
in  which  the  most  grasping  selfishness  is  displayed.  We  fol- 
low him  to  Leicester  House,  that  ancient  tenement — (where- 
fore pulled  down,  except  to  erect  on  its  former  site  the  narrow- 
est of  streets,  does  not  appear) :  that  former  home  of  the  Syd- 
neys  had  not  always  been  polluted  by  the  dissolute,  heartless 
clique  who  composed  the  court  of  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales. 
Its  chambers  had  once  been  traversed  by  Henry  Sydney,  by 
Algernon,  his  brother.  It  was  their  home — their  father,  Rob- 
ert Sydney,  Earl  of  Leicester,  having  lived  there.  The  lovely 
Dorothy  Sydney,  Waller's  Saccharissa,  once,  in  all.purity  and 
grace,  had  danced  in  that  gallery  where  the  vulgar,  brazen 
Lady  Middlesex  and  her  compliant  lord  afterward  flattered  the 
weakest  of  princes,  Frederick.  In  old  times,  Leicester  House 
had  stood  on  Lammas  land — land,  in  the  spirit  of  the  old  char- 
ities, open  to  the  poor  at  Lammas-tide ;  and  even  "  the  Right 
Hon.  the  Earl  of  Leicester" — as  an  old  document  hath  it — was 
obliged,  if  he  chose  to  turn  out  his  cows  or  horses  on  that  ap- 
propriated land,  to  pay  a  rent  for  it  to  the  overseers  of  St. 
Martin's  parish,  then  really  "  in  the  fields."  And  here  this  no- 
bleman not  only  dwelt  in  all  state  himself,  but  let  or  lent  his 
house  to  persons  whose  memory  seems  to  hallow  even  Leices- 
ter Fields.  Elizabeth  of  Bohemia,  after  what  was  to  her  in- 
deed "  life's  fitful  fever,"  died  at  Leicester  House.  It  became 
then,  temporarily,  the  abode  of  embassadors.  Colbert,  in  the 
time  of  Charles  II.,  occupied  the  place ;  Prince  Eugene,  in  1712, 
held  his  residence  here ;  and  the  rough  soldier,  famous  for  all 
absence  of  tact — brave,  loyal-hearted,  and  coarse — lingered  at 
Leicester  House  in  hopes  of  obstructing  the  peace  between  En- 
gland and  France. 

All  that  was  good  and  great  fled  forever  from  Leicester 
House  at  the  instant  that  George  II.,  when  Prince  of  Wales, 
was  driven  by  his  royal  father  from  St.  James's,  and  took  up 
his  abode  in  it  until  the  death  of  George  I.  The  once  honored 
home  of  the  Sydneys  henceforth  becomes  loathsome  in  a  moral 
sense.  Here  William,  Duke  of  Cumberland — the  hero,  as  court 
flatterers  called  him ;  the  butcher,  as  the  poor  Jacobites  desig- 
nated him  of  Culloden — first  saw  the  light.  Peace  and  re- 
spectability then  departed  the  old  house  forever.  Prince  Fred- 
erick was  its  next  inmate :  here  the  Princess  of  Wales,  the 
mother  of  George  III.,  had  her  lyings-in,  and  her  royal  husband 
held  his  public  tables  ;  and  at  these  and  in  every  assembly,  as 
well  as  in  private,  one  figure  is  conspicuous. 

Grace  Boyle — for  she  unworthily  bore  that  great  name — 
was  the  daughter  and  heiress  of  Richard,  Viscount  Shannon. 


478  ELEGANT   MODES    OF   PASSING   TIME. 

She  married  Lord  Middlesex,  bringing  him  a  fortune  of  thirty 
thousand  pounds.  Short,  plain,  "  very  yellow,"  as  her  contem- 
poraries affirm,  with  a  head  full  of  Greek  and  Latin,  and  de- 
voted to  music  and  painting  ;  it  seems  strange  that  Frederick 
should  have  been  attracted  to  one  far  inferior  to  his  own  prin- 
cess both  in  mind  and  person.  But  so  it  was,  for  in  those  days 
every  man  liked  his  neighbor's  wife  better  than  his  own.  Imi- 
tating the  forbearance  of  her  royal  mother-in-law,  the  princess 
tolerated  such  of  her  husband's  mistresses  as  did  not  interfere 
in  politics  :  Lady  Middlesex  was  the  "  my  good  Mrs.  Howard" 
of  Leicester  House.  She  was  made  Mistress  of  the  Robes : 
her  favor  soon  "  grew,"  as  the  shrewd  Horace  remarks,  "  to  be 
rather  more  than  Platonic."  She  lived  with  the  royal  pair 
constantly,  and  sat  up  till  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  at  their 
suppers ;  and  Lord  Middlesex  saw  and  submitted  to  all  that 
was  going  on  with  the  loyalty  and  patience  of  a  Georgian 
courtier.  Lady  Middlesex  was  a  docile  politician,  and,  on  that 
account,  retained  her  position  probably  long  after  she  had  lost 
her  influence. 

Her  name  appears  constantly  in  the  "  Diary,"  out  of  which 
every  thing  amusing  has  been  carefully  expunged. 

"  Lady  Middlesex,  Lord  Bathurst,  Mr.  Breton,  and  I,  waited 
on  their  Royal  Highnesses  to  Spitalfields,  to  see  the  manufac- 
ture of  silk."  In  the  afternoon  off  went  the  same  party  to 
Norwood  Forest,  in  private  coaches,  to  see  a  "  settlement  of 
gipsies."  Then  returning,  went  to  find  out  Bettesworth,  the 
conjuror,  but,  not  discovering  him,  went  in  search  of  the  "  lit- 
tle Dutchman."  Were  disappointed  in  that,  but  "  concluded," 
relates  Bubb  Dodington,  "  the  particularities  of  this  day  by 
supping  with  Mrs.  Cannon,  the  princess's  midwife" 

All  these  elegant  modes  of  passing  the  time  were  not  only 
for  the  sake  of  Lady  Middlesex,  but,  it  was  said,  of  her  friend, 
Miss  Granville,  one  of  the  maids  of  honor,  daughter  of  the  first 
Lord  Lansdown,  the  poet.  This  young  lady/Eliza  Granville, 
was  scarcely  pretty :  a  fair,  red-haired  girl. 

All  this  thoughtless,  if  not  culpable  gallantry,  was  abruptly 
checked  by  the  rude  hand  of  death.  During  the  month  of 
March,  Frederick  was  attacked  with  illness,  having  caught 
cold.  Very  little  apprehension  was  expressed  at  first,  but, 
about  eleven  days  after  his  first  attack,  he  expired.  Half  an 
hour  before  his  death  he  had  asked  to  see  some  friends,  and 
had  called  for  coffee  and  bread  and  butter :  a  fit  of  coughing 
came  on,  and  he  died  instantly  from  suffocation.  An  abscess, 
which  had  been  forming  in  his  side,  had  burst;  nevertheless, 
liis  two  physicians,  Wilmot  and  Lee,  "  knew  nothing  of  his  dis- 
temper." According  to  Lord  Melcombe,  who  thus  refers  to 


A   SAD   DAY.  479 

their  blunders,  "  They  declared,  half  an  hour  before  his  death, 
that  his  pulse  was  like  a  man's  in  perfect  health.  They  either 
would  not  see  or  did  not  know  the  consequences  of  the  black 
thrush,  which  appeared  in  his  mouth,  and  quite  down  into  his 
throat.  Their  ignorance,  or  their  knowledge  of  his  disorder, 
renders  them  equally  inexcusable  for  not  calling  in  other  assist- 
ance." 

The  consternation  in  the  prince's  household  was  great,  not 
for  his  life,  but  for  the  confusion  into  which  politics  were 
thrown  by  his  death.  After  his  relapse,  and  until  just  before 
his  death,  the  princess  never  suffered  any  English  man  or  wom- 
an above  the  degree  of  valet-de-chambre  to  see  him ;  nor 
did  she  herself  see  any  one  of  her  household  until  absolutely 
necessary.  After  the  death  of  his  eldest  born,  George  II.  vent- 
ed his  diabolical  jealousy  upon  the  cold  remains  of  one  thus 
cut  off  in  the  prime  of  life.  The  funeral  was  ordered  to  be  on 
the  model  of  that  of  Charles  II.,  but  private  counter-orders 
were  issued  to  reduce  the  ceremonial  to  the  smallest  degree  of 
respect  that  could  be  paid. 

On  the  13th  of  April,  1751,  the  body  of  the  prince  was  en- 
tombed in  Henry  VII.'s  chapel.  Except  the  lords  appointed 
to  hold  the  pall  and  attend  the  chief  mourner,  when  the  at- 
tendants were  called  over  in  their  ranks,  there  was  not  a  sin- 
£le  English  lord,  not  one  bishop,  and  only  one  Irish  lord  (Lord 
imerick),  and  three  sons  of  peers.  Sir  John  Rushout  and 
Dodington  were  the  only  privy  councilors  who  followed.  It 
rained  heavily,  but  no  covering  was  provided  for  the  proces- 
sion. The  service  was  performed  without  organ  or  anthem. 
"  Thus,"  observes  Bubb  Dodington,  "  ended  this  sad  day." 

Although  the  prince  left  a  brother  and  sisters,  the  Duke  of 
Somerset  acted  as  chief  mourner.  The  king  hailed  the  event 
of  the  prince's  death  as  a  relief,  which  was  to  render  happy 
his  remaining  days ;  and  Bubb  Dodington  hastened,  in  a  few 
months,  to  offer  to  the  Pelhams  "  his  friendship  and  attach- 
ment." His  attendance  at  court  was  resumed,  although 
George  II.  could  not  endure  him;  and  the  old  Walpolians, 
nicknamed  the  Black-tan,  were  also  averse  to  him. 

Such  were  Bubb  Dodington's  actions.  His  expressions,  on 
occasion  of  the  prince's  death,  were  in  a  very  different  tone. 

"  We  have  lost,"  he  wrote  to  Sir  Horace  Mann,  "  the  delight 
and  ornament  of  the  age  he  lived  in — the  expectations  of  the 
public  :  in  this  light  I  have  lost  more  than  any  subject  in  En- 
gland.; but  this  is  light ;  public  advantages  confined  to  myself 
do  not,  ought  not,  to  weigh  with  me.  But  we  have  lost  the 
refuge  of  private  distress — the  balm  of  the  afflicted  heart — the 
shelter  of  the  miserable  against  the  fury  of  private  adversity ; 


480         "WHAT  DOES  DODINGTON  COME  HEBE  FOB?" 

the  arts,  the  graces,  the  anguish,  the  misfortunes  of  society, 
have  lost  their  patron  and  their  remedy. 

"I  have  lost  my  companion — my  protector — the  friend  that 
loved  me,  that  condescended  to  hear,  to  communicate,  to  share 
in  all  the  pleasures  and  pains  of  the  human  heart :  where  the 
social  affections  and  emotions  of  the  mind  only  presided,  with- 
out regard  to  the  infinite  disproportion  of  my  rank  and  condi- 
tion. This  is  a  wound  that  can  not,  ought  not  to  heal.  If  I 
pretended  to  fortitude  here,  I  should  be  infamous — a  monster 
of  ingratitude — and  unworthy  of  all  consolation,  if  I  was  not 
inconsolable." 

"  Thank  you,"  writes  the  shrewd  Horace  Walpole,  address- 
ing Sir  Horace  Mann, ."  for  the  transcript  from  JSubb  de  Tris- 
tibus.  I  will  keep  your  secret,  though  I  am  persuaded  that  a 
man  who  has  composed  such  a  funeral  oration  on  his  master 
had  himself  fully  intended  that  its  flowers  should  not  bloom 
and  wither  in  obscurity." 

Well  might  George  II.,  seeing  him  go  to  court,  say :  "  I  see 
Dodington  here  sometimes ;  what  does  he  come  for  ?" 

It  was,  however,  clearly  seen  what  he  went  for,  when,  in  1753, 
two  years  after  the  death  of  his  "  benefactor,"  Dodington  hum- 
bly offered  His  Majesty  his  services  in  the  house,  and  "five  mem- 
bers," for  the  rest  of  his  life,  if  His  Majesty  would  give  Mr. 
Pelham  leave  to  employ  him  for  His  Majesty's  service.  Never- 
theless, he  continued  to  advise  with  the  Princess  of  Wales,  and 
to  drop  into  her  house  as  if  it  had  been  a  sister's  house — sitting 
on  a  stool  near  the  fireside,  and  listening  to  her  accounts  of  her 
children. 

In  the  midst  of  these  intrigues  for  favor  on  the  part  of  Dod- 
ington, Mr.  Pelham  died,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  brother,  the 
Duke  of  Newcastle,  the  issue  of  whose  administration  is  well 
known. 

In  1760  death  again  befriended  the  now  veteran  wit,  beau, 
and  politician.  George  II.  died  ;  and  the  intimacy  which  Dod- 
ington had  always  taken  care  to  preserve  between  himself  and 
the  Princess  of  Wales  ended  advantageously  for  him;  and  he 
instantly,  in  spite  of  all  his  former  professions  to  Pelham,  join- 
ed hand  and.  heart  with  that  minister,  from  whom  he  obtained 
a  peerage.  This,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  long  enjoyed.  Lord 
Melcombe,  as  this  able,  intriguing  man  was  now  styled,  died 
on  the  28th  of  July,  1762,  and  with  him  terminated  the  short- 
lived distinction  for  which  he  had  sacrificed  even  a  decent  pre- 
text of  principle  and  consistency. 

So  general  has  been  the  contempt  felt  for  his  character,  that 
it  seems  almost  needless  to  assert  that  Bubb  Dodington  was 
eminently  to  be  despised.  Nothing  much  more  severe  can  be 


DEFEND    US    FROM    OUR   EXECUTORS    AND    EDITORS.        481 

said  of  him  than  the  remarks  of  Horace  Walpole  upon  his 
"  Diary,"  in  which  he  observes  that  Dodington  records  little 
but  what  is  to  his  own  disgrace ;  as  if  he  thought  that  the 
world  would  forgive  his  inconsistencies  as  readily  as  he  forgave 
himself.  "Had  he"  adopted,"  Horace  well  observes,  "the 
French  title  '  Confessions?  it  would  have  seemed  to  imply 
some  kind  of  penitence." 

But  vain-glory  engrossed  him :  "  he  was  determined  to  raise 
an  altar  to  himself,  and,  for  want  of  burnt-offerings,  lighted  the 
pyre,  like  a  great  author  (Rousseau),  with  his  own  character." 

It  was  said  by  the  same  acute  observer,  both  of  Lord  Her- 
vey  and  of  Bubb  Dodington,  that  "  they  were  the  only  two  per- 
sons he  ever  knew  that  were  always  aiming  at  wit  and  never 
finding  it."  And  here,  it  seems,  most  that  can  be  testified  in 
praise  of  a  heartless,  clever  man,  must  be  summed  up. 

Lord  Melcombe's  property,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  leg- 
acies, devolved  upon  his  cousin,  Thomas  Wyndham,  of  Ham- 
mersmith, by  whom  his  lordship's  papers,  letters,  and  poems 
were  bequeathed  to  Henry  Penruddocke  Wyndham,  with  an 
injunction  that  only  such  as  "might  do  honor  to  his  memory 
should  be  made  public." 

After  this,  in  addition  to  the  true  saying,  defend  us  from  our 
friends,  one  may  exclaim,  "  defend  us  from  our  executors  and 
editors." 

X 


THE    END. 


Mr.  Motley,  the  American  historian  of  the  United  Netherlands— we  owe  him 
English  homage. — LONDON  TIMES. 

"  As  interesting  as  a  romance,  and  as  reliable  as  a  proposition  of  Euclid.1" 


History  of 
The  United  Netherlands. 

FBOM   THE  DEATH  OF  WILLIAM  THE   SILENT  TO  THE   SYNOD  OF  DOKT.      WITH  A 

FULL  VIEW  OF  THE  ENGLISH-DUTCH   STBUGGLE  AGAINST   SPAIN,  AND 

OF  THE  OEIGIN  AND  DESTEUOTION  OF  THE  SPANISH 

ABMADA. 

BY  JOHN  LOTHROP  MOTLEY,  LL.D.,  D.C.L., 

Corresponding  Member  of  the  Institute  of  France,  Author  of  "The  Rise  of  the 
Dutch  Republic." 

With  Portraits  and  Map. 

2  vols.  8vo,  Muslin,  $4  00;  Sheep,  $4  50;  Half  Calf,  $6  00. 

Critical  Notices. 

Hia  living  and  truthful  picture  of  events.— Quarterly  Review  (London),  Jan., 
1861. 

Fertile  as  the  present  age  has  been  in  historical  works  of  the  highest  merit, 
none  of  them  can  be  ranked  above  these  volumes  in  the  grand  qualities  of  interest, 
accuracy,  and  truth. — Edinburgh  Quarterly  Review,  Jan.,  1861. 

This  noble  work. — Westminster  Review  (London). 

One  of  the  most  fascinating  as  well  as  important  histories  of  the  century Cor. 

N.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

The  careful  study  of  these  volumes  will  infallibly  afford  a  feast  both  rich  and 
rare Baltimore  Republican. 

Already  takes  a  rank  among  standard  works  of  history.— .London  Critic. 

Mr.  Motley's  prose  epic. —London  Spectator. 

Its  pages  are  pregnant  with  instruction — London  Literary  Gazette. 

We  may  profit  by  almost  every  page  of  his  narrative.  All  the  topics  which  agi- 
tate us  now  are  more  or  less  vividly  presented  in  the  History  of  the  United  Nether- 
lands  New  York  Times. 

Bears  on  every  page  marks  of  the  same  vigorous  mind  that  produced  "The  Rise 
of  the  Dutch  Republic;"  but  the  new  work  is  riper,  mellower,  and  though  equally 
racy  of  the  soil,  softer  flavored.  The  inspiring  idea  which  breathes  through  Mr. 
Motley's  histories  and  colors  the  whole  texture  of  his  narrative,  is  the  grandeur  of 
that  memorable  struggle  in  the  16th  century  by  which  the  human  mind  broke  the 
thraldom  of  religious  intolerance  and  achieved  jts  independence — The  World,  N.  Y. 

The  name  of  Motley  now  stands  in  the  very  front  rank  of  living  historians.  Hia 
Dutch  Republic  took  the  world  by  surprise ;  but  the  favorable  verdict  then  given 
is  now  only  the  more  deliberately  confirmed  on  the  publication  of  the  continued 
story  under  the  title  of  the  History  of  the  United  Netherlands.  All  the  nerve, 
and  power,  and  substance  of  juicy  life  are  there,  lending  a  charm  to  every  page.— 
Church  Journal,  N.  Y. 

Motley,  indeed,  has  produced  a  prose  epic,  and  his  fighting  scenes  are  as  real, 
spirited,  and  life-like  as  the  combats  in  the  Iliad The  Press  (Phila.). 

His  history  is  as  interesting  as  a  romance,  and  as  reliable  as  a  proposition  of  Eu- 
clid. Clio  never  had  a  more  faithful  disciple.  We  advise  every  reader  whose 
means  will  permit  to  become  the  owner  of  these  fascinating  volumes,  assuring  him 
that  he  will  never  regret  the  investment. — Christian  Intelligencer,  N.  Y. 

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They  do  honor  to  American  Literature,  and  would  do 
honor  to  the  Literature  of  any  Country  in  the  World." 


THE   RISE   OF 
THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC. 

&  f  istorji. 
BY  JOHN  LOTHKOP  MOTLEY. 

New  Edition.  With  a  Portrait  of  WILLIAM  OF  ORANGE.  3  vols. 
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We  regard  this  work  as  the  best  contribution  to  modern  history  that  has  yet 
been  made  by  an  American.—  Methodist  Quarterly  Review. 

The  "History  of  the  Dutch  Kepublic"  is  a  great  gift  to  us;  but  the  heart  and 
earnestness  that  beat  through  all  its  pages  are  greater,  for  they  give  us  most 
timely  inspiration  to  vindicate  the  true  ideas  of  our  country,  and  to  compose  an 
able  history  of  our  own.  —  Christian  Examiner  (Boston). 

This  work  bears  on  its  face  the  evidences  of  scholarship  and  research.  The 
arrangement  is  clear  and  effective  ;  the  style  energetic,  lively,  and  often  brilliant, 
*  *  *  Mr.  Motley's  instructive  volumes  will,  we  trust,  have  a  circulation  commen- 
surate with  their  interest  and  value.—  Protestant  Episcopal  Quarterly  Review. 

To  the  illustration  of  this  most  interesting  period  Mr.  Motley  has  brought  the 
matured  powers  of  a  vigorous  and  brilliant  mind,  and  the  abundant  fruits  of  pa- 
tient and  judicious  study  and  deep  reflection.  The  result  is,  one  of  the  most 
important  contributions  to  historical  literature  that  have  been  made  in  this  coun- 
try. —  North  American  Review. 

We  would  conclude  this  notice  by  earnestly  recommending  our  readers  to  pro- 
cure for  themselves  this  truly  great  and  admirable  work,  by  the  production  of 
which  the  anther  has  conferred  no  less  honor  upon  his  country  than  he  has  won 
praise  and  fame  for  himself,  and  than  which,  we  can  assure  them,  they  can  find 
.  nothing  more  attractive  or  interesting  within  the  compass  of  modern  literature. 
—Evangelical  Review. 

It  is  not  often  that  we  have  the  pleasure  of  commending  to  the  attention  of  the 
lover  of  books  a  work  of  such  extraordinary  aud  unexceptionable  excellence  as 
this  one.  —  Universalist  Quarterly  Review. 

There  are  an  elevation  and  a  classic  polish  in  these  volumes,  and  a  felicity  of 
grouping  and  of  portraiture,  which  invest  the  subject  with  the  attractions  of  a 
living  and  stirring  episode  in  the  grand  historic  drama.—  Southern  Methodist 
Quarterly  Review. 

The  author  writes  with  a  genial  glow  and  love  of  his  subject.—  Presbyterian 
Quarterly  Review. 

Mr.  Motley  is  a  sturdy  Republican  and  a  hearty  Protestant  His  style  is  live- 
ly and  picturesque,  and  his  work  is  an  honor  and  an  important  accession  to  our 
national  literature.  —  Church  Review. 

Mr.  Motley's  work  is  an  important  one,  the  result  of  profound  research,  sincere 
convictions,  sound  principles,  and  manly  sentiments;  and  even  those  who  are 
most  familiar  with  the  history  of  the  period  will  find  in  it  a  fresh  and  vivid  ad- 
dition to  their  previous  knowledge.  It  does  honor  to  American  literature,  and 
would  do  honor  to  the  literature  of  any  country  in  the  world.—  Edinburgh  Re- 
view. 

A  serious  chasm  in  English  historical  literature  has  been  (by  this  book)  very 
remarkably  filled.  *  *  *  A  history  as  complete  as  industry  and  genius  can  make 
it  now  lies  before  us,  of  the  first  twenty  years  of  the  revolt  of  the  United  Prov- 
inces. •  •  *  All  the  essentials  of  a  great  writer  Mr.  Motley  eminently  possesses. 
His  mind  is  broad,  his  industry  unwearied.  In  power  of  dramatic  descriptiou 
no  modern  historian,  except,  perhaps,  Mr.  Carlyle,  surpasses  him,  and  in  analy- 
sis of  character  he  is  elaborate  and  distinct—  Wexfrninster  Review. 


2    MOTLEY'S  RISE  OF  THE  DUTCH  REPUBLIC. 

It  ia  a  work  of  real  historical  value,  the  result  of  accurate  criticism,  written 
in  a  liberal  spirit,  and  from  first  to  last  deeply  interesting.— Athenceum. 

The  style  is  excellent,  clear,  vivid,  eloquent;  and  the  industry  with  which 
original  sources  have  been  investigated,  and  through  which  new  light  has  been 
shed  over  perplexed  incidents  and  characters,  entitles  Mr.  Motley  to  a  high  rank 
in  the  literature  of  an  age  peculiarly  rich  in  history.— North  British  Review. 

It  abounds  in  new  information,  and,  as  a  first  work,  commands  a  very  cordial 
recognition,  not  merely  of  the  promise  it  gives,  but  of  the  extent  and  importance 
of  the  labor  actually  performed  on  it. — London  Examiner. 

Mr.  Motley's  "History"  is  a  work  of  which  any  country  might  be  proud- 
Press  (London). 

Mr.  Motley's  History  will  be  a  standard  book  of  reference  in  historical  litera- 
ture.—London  Literary  Gazette. 

Mr.  Motley  has  searched  the  whole  range  ef  historical  documents  necessary  to 
the  composition  of  his  work. — London  Leader. 

This  is  really  a  great  work.  It  belongs  to  the  class  of  books  in  which  we 
r&nge  our  Grotes,  Milmans,  Merivales,  and  Macaulays,  as  the  glories  of  English 
literature  in  the  department  of  history.  *  *  *  Mr.  Motley's  gifts  as  a  historical 
writer  are  among  the  highest  and  rarest. — Nonconformist  (London). 

Mr.  Motley's  volumes  will  well  repay  perusal.  *  *  *  For  his  learning,  his  liberal 
tone,  and  his  generous  enthusiasm,  we  heartily  commend  him,  and  bid  him  good 
speed  for  the  remainer  of  his  interesting  and  heroic  narrative. — Saturday  Review. 

The  story  is  a  noble  one,  and  is  worthily  treated.  *  *  *  Mr.  Motley  has  had  the 
patience  to  unravel,  with  unfailing  perseverance,  the  thousand  intricate  plots  of 
the  adversaries  of  the  Prince  of  Orange ;  but  the  details  and  the  literal  extracts 
which  he  has  derived  from  original  documents,  and  transferred  to  his  pages, 
give  a  truthful  color  and  a  picturesque  effect,  which  are  especially  charming.— 
London  Daily  News. 

M.  Lothrop  Motley  dans  son  magnifique  tableau  de  la  formation  de  notre  R6- 
publique.— G.  GBOEN  VAN  PEINSTEBER. 

Our  accomplished  countryman,  Mr.  J.  Lothrop  Motley,  who,  during  the  last 
five  years,  for  the  better  prosecution  of  his  labors,  has  established  his  residence 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  scenes  of  his  narrative.  No  one  acquainted  with  the 
fine  powers  of  mind  possessed  by  this  scholar,  and  the  earnestness  with  which  he 
has  devoted  himself  to  the  task,  can  doubt  that  he  will  do  full  justice  to  his  im- 
portant but  difficult  subject— W.  H.  PBESOOTT. 

The  production  of  such  a  work  as  this  astonishes,  while  it  gratifies  the  pride 
of  the  American  reader. — N.  Y.  Observer. 

The  "Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic"  at  once,  and  by  acclamation,  takes  its 
place  by  the  "  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  as  a  work  which,  wheth- 
er for  research,  substance,  or  style,  will  never  be  superseded. — N.  Y.  Albion. 

A  work  upon  which  all  who  read  the  English  language  may  congratulate 
themselves. — New  Yorker  Handels  Zeitung. 

Mr.  Motley's  place  is  now  (alluding  to  this  book)  with  Hallam  and  Lord  Ma- 
hon,  Alison  and  Macaulay  in  the  Old  Country,  and  with  Washington  Irving, 
Prescott,  and  Bancroft  in  this.—  N.  Y.  Times. 

THE  authority,  in  the  English  tongue,  for  the  history  of  the  period  and  people 
to  which  it  refers. — N.  Y.  Courier  and  Enquirer. 

This  work  at  once  places  the  author  on  the  list  of  American  historians  which 
has  been  so  signally  illustrated  by  the  names  of  Irving,  Prescott,  Bancroft,  and 
Hildreth.—  Boston  Times. 

The  work  is  a  noble  one,  and  a  most  desirable  acquisition  to  our  historical  lit- 
arature.— Mobile  Advertiser. 

Such  a  work  is  an  honor  to  its  author,  to  his  country,  and  to  the  age  in  which 
it  was  written. — Ohio  Farmer. 

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THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


OCT 1  8  1979  REC'D 


50m-l,'69(J5643s8)2373 — 3A.1 


ST3RED  AT  NRLF 


DA485.T6 


3  2106  00031   0737 


